




Gass ~Z. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 




























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SHODDY 
























SHODDY 

by 

Dan Brummitt 


“Shoddy is dead wool” 


I 



Willett, Clark & Colby 
Chicago: 440 South Dearborn Street 
1928 




COPYRIGHT 1928, BY WILLETT, CLARK & COLBY 



nm 10 1328 





PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


©Cl ft 1068288 ) 


The people of this story are types; 
no character is the portrait of an 
actual individual. 


D. B. 










CHAPTER I 


I 

For the moment, an aspect of peace rested on all Methodism. 

The next General Conference was not yet near enough to 
be within the range of practical politics. The legislation of 
the preceding supreme council of the church had all been 
made operative, with such significant modifications as the 
elder statesmen had agreed were necessary, knowing as they 
did that a General Conference, like Congress, sometimes in¬ 
serts stultifying rather than enacting clauses into its legisla¬ 
tion. 

It had been months since the American Labor and Capital 
Council had “launched a broadside” in the general direction 
of Bishop Eberle; and though in public that astute and inde¬ 
pendent cleric had nothing to say, to his friends he voiced his 
wonder at this long immunity. He was using the days of truce 
to gather new stores of the explosive sort of fact he delights 
in. 

The Western Wesleyan had become mixed up in a violent 
dispute which raged around the preaching of a famous heretic 
of the Dutch Reformed Church, temporarily supplying the 
pulpit of the President’s church in Washington. So it had 
suspended for the time its denunciations of the doctrinal un¬ 
faithfulness which the Board of Missions permitted among its 
“employees,” as the Wesleyan urbanely tagged the church’s 
missionaries. 

For the first time since the war the sloganeers were silent. 
They seemed to have lost confidence in their wares. The 
outworn tags of the Centenary were not being replaced by 
new-coined mottoes such as those which, in the more spacious 
easy money days, would have been counted on to stimulate 
successive crowd-minded spasms of sacrifice among the rank 
and file. 

Here and there a modest local “drive” was on; in the 


1 


2 


SHODDY 


denomination at large, none at all. A huge unpopularity had 
befallen the word and the thing it stood for. 

In an excess of zeal an amateur census taker had announced 
that the Methodists, North and South, could claim as co¬ 
religionists by far the largest if not the shrewdest group in 
Congress. Thereby he had much embarrassed some of the 
church’s untiring propagandists. In the face of the figures, 
and with the Methodists’ own proven abilities as politician- 
baiters, the horrendous warnings of these one-idea’d brethren 
against the possible machinations of other religious groups in 
public affairs evoked gusts of ribald laughter among the 
knowing ones of the Capitol. 

College presidents were busy with the collection of some¬ 
what reluctant long-term subscriptions; pledges which had 
been made in haste and were being repented of, as well as 
being paid, at distressingly deliberate leisure. 

And, from Boston to Los Angeles, for weeks on end, the 
newspapers had been unable to produce a front-page story 
of student revolt or student orgy in any Methodist institution 
of higher learning. 

It was the luck of the Methodists that in such a time of 
dearth Bishop Bartelmy Bonafede, the church’s symbol of 
shrewdness and poise, should crumple up on a college plat¬ 
form into strengthless, wordless terror, right in the midst of 
so unexciting a performance as a Baccalaureate Sunday 
sermon. 

Instantly the editors, with Monday’s yawning columns to 
fill, recognized the event as, for them providential. The re¬ 
sulting story was promptly spread in front-page frankness 
before all the world, and read avidly by that great multitude 
which tends to be gleeful when the Methodists “get theirs.” 

In these pages is presented the whole Bonafede story, which 
the newspapers could not know, nor would have printed if 
they had found it out. Its marrow is the marrow of ecclesi- 
asticism in the bones of Methodism. 

Whether you like Methodists or not—and, of course, you do 
or you don’t; there’s no middle position—you must admit that 
they have what amounts to an instinct for the spotlight. At 
times they enjoy it, when they shouldn’t; at other times they 
dodge it, when its revelations might be wholesome. But, for 


SHODDY 


3 


better or worse, there they are; endless good copy for the 
reporter who tries to know his business. 

It is their inescapable legacy from John Wesley. 

ii 

“So Bonafede had a field day?” remarked Colonel Burling¬ 
ton. “He would. Always does, when it can be arranged. And 
he usually knows how to arrange it, or did, before this crash I 
was telling you about. What sort of recovery he will make, of 
course nobody can tell. If he’s not physically broken, he’ll 
come back. I know Bishop Bonafede.” 

It was the end of a London summer. Two Americans sat in 
the lounge of the National Liberal Club, around the corner 
from Whitehall. They had been guests of a Methodist knight 
at a luncheon in that Victorian sanctuary. Much of the table 
talk dealt with the place of worship sometimes pridefully called 
the “Cathedral of Methodism,” but, more simply and accu¬ 
rately, “Wesley’s Chapel,” in the City Road. 

One of the two men, Professor Athelstan Dailey, head of the 
history department in a Middle-West college, found it vari¬ 
ously profitable to cross the Atlantic as often as professional 
means would allow. His companion, a fellow-Methodist, and 
more recently arrived, had no more than the tourist’s excuse 
for being in England. They were old friends, and, as expa¬ 
triates will, found peculiar solace in each other’s company. The 
Colonel had been bringing his friend down to date in the mat¬ 
ter of news from home. 

“What you say about Bishop Bonafede’s breakdown at the 
Calder commencement is disturbing,” said the professor, 
“even though I’m not enamored of the bishop. I was thinking, 
while Sir Charles was talking about Wesley’s Chapel, of the 
time, a couple of years ago, when Bishop Bonafede preached 
there. Did you ever hear the story?” 

“Why, no,” said Colonel Burlington. “An American Method¬ 
ist bishop in John Wesley’s pulpit is not so unusual as to make 
a story, I should think.” 

Professor Dailey, with his half-conscious and slightly awk¬ 
ward approach to the English manner, said, “Quite. But there 
were circumstances. The bishop is English-born, you know; 
comes from the heavy woolen district of Yorkshire. He had 


4 


SHODDY 


let it be known in the West Riding that he was to occupy the 
City Road pulpit, and an excursion of Bonafedes and their con¬ 
nections to the fourth remove descended on London for the 
occasion. The fortunes of the Bonafedes—some of them—have 
been looking up since the bishop’s family emigrated. They say 
it was a strange and motley company that swelled the City 
Road congregation—prosperous mill-owners and their families, 
a couple of Sir Thomas Liptons in miniature, and even the 
mayor of a thriving little borough near Huddersfield, together 
with many cousins of lesser degree. The City Road sidesmen 
were greatly impressed, and the story is on the way to becom¬ 
ing a minor legend in London Methodism,—a sort of Metho¬ 
dist combination of Benjamin Franklin, Dick Whittington, and 
P. T. Barnum.” 

“Hadn’t heard of it,” said Colonel Burlington. “You’ve evi¬ 
dently been specializing in Bonafede antiquities this trip. 
What else have you discovered?” 

“Well, I’ve learned that Bonafede had a hard start,” the 
professor answered. “And that, if it were known, might make 
a difference when the brethren at home assume to sit in judg¬ 
ment on him. You see, I was down in the bishop’s native 
haunts last month.” 

“On the Bonafede trail?” the Colonel suggested. 

“No, not exactly. Though you might almost think so. But 
the town where the bishop was born has a rather romantic 
ruined abbey, with its reminders of Henry VIII and Oliver 
Cromwell. That was my first interest in the place. Once there, 
it was not difficult to discover that the district was one of the 
first homes of the shoddy trade, and that the town is still a 
shoddy center.” 

“Shoddy!” Colonel Burlington laughed. “What’s shoddy, 
or the abbey either, got to do with Bartelmy Bonafede?” 

“Don’t laugh. I told you he had a hard start. Let me sketch 
for you the background of his childhood, as I saw it. Balak- 
lava Terrace is a drab little street of this drab little town called 
Thornlea, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. In that part of 
the country, where woolens are woven for the whole earth, 
shoddy is anything but comic. It has both business and social 
standing. My economist colleagues on the campus at home 
recognize shoddy in their treatises as a laudable example of 
the utilization of what otherwise would be waste material. 


SHODDY 


5 


Thornlea exists to illustrate that thesis. Shoddy is the breath 
of its life. 

“But with all its admitted usefulness, shoddy is shoddy; and 
I suppose a town which specializes in it cannot help being sub¬ 
dued to the fibers it works in. So Thornlea was, and is; and 
our own Bishop Bartelmy Bonafede, authentic child of Balak- 
lava Terrace, Thornlea—how could he escape? 

“Do you know much about shoddy, by the way, Colonel? 
No? Neither did I. But I found out a lot about it in Thorn¬ 
lea, where it is very much at home. Shoddy, as everybody 
should know, but doesn’t, begins by being worsted or woolen 
rags; just rags. But there are vast differences in rags. They 
may have been royal raiment, in fact or merely figuratively, 
as having been worn for virtue’s sake. 

“Battlefields have always been rich in rag deposits, though 
if the uniforms of those who fell there were shoddy in the 
first place, as millions of them were, the profits of the second 
gathering and processing are discounted somewhat. Rags 
come from next door, and from far places of the earth. No 
famine or pestilence or earthquake-smitten area of the Orient 
is so remote that it has not sent dead men’s rags to Thornlea.” 

“You’re not serious when you say that, of course,” the Col¬ 
onel interjected. “Not dead men’s rags, at any rate. There 
are limits to my credulity, you know.” 

“My dear Colonel, I assure you it is precisely as I say. 
The rag merchant is no respecter of the amenities, or of places. 
Battlefields, back alleys, my lady’s boudoir, are all the same 
to him. But don’t think he is a befouler of his customers. He 
has processes which take out the dirt, the blood, the mud, the 
germs, and all that sort of thing, and leave nothing but thor¬ 
oughly aseptic fibers. They’re more than sanitary when they 
start to become cloth once again. 

“The special value of all this raw material is that, not being 
really raw, but having paid for itself once, it is therefore a 
sort of salvage, and salvage-cheap. It is a short-cut to new 
cloth. Shoddy has various forms, and names to match—mungo, 
extracted wool, flocks, noils. I was told by a Thornlea philos¬ 
opher that Thornlea can manage to use anything which once 
grew T on a sheep’s back and is still long enough to have two 
ends. 

“Shoddy must have had a lot to do with the bishop’s early 


6 


SHODDY 


training. He was just in his teens when his father gave up 
his business in Thornlea, and decided on America as his only 
hope. Indeed, I have a theory that you can explain much 
about Bishop Bonafede if you remember that he was out of 
the sixth grade before he was out of the atmosphere of shoddy.” 

“I wonder,” said Colonel Burlington. “It depends on what 
you think there is to explain. Remember the talk we had on 
your front porch when I stopped off in May for the Leyton 
Center dedication? You believe Bonafede has made a mess 
of life. I believe he’s made a go of it, even if this collapse 
means he’s through. I’m a man of ideas; you’re an idealist. 
That’s why we differ. And now, since the rain seems to have 
quit, if you don’t mind I’ll stroll along the Embankment. Re¬ 
member, you’re dining with me tonight at the Victoria. I’m 
asking a new Englishman to meet us; one of those Ministry 
of Information men who helped Northcliffe to win the war. 
He knows young Bonafede,—says he gave him his start as a 
war correspondent.” 


CHAPTER II 


I 

Professor Athelstan Dailey was more nearly right than so 
casual an observer deserves to be. Shoddy and Thornlea had 
left their mark on Bishop Bartelmy Bonafede. The place 
ground into his soul both the taint and the terror of shoddy. 
It made him an easy picker-up of borrowed and re-worked 
ideas; and it put into his heart the perpetual dread of being 
discovered for other than he seemed. 

His father, while not directly in shoddy, was affected, like 
all Thornlea folk, by the vicissitudes of the trade. He was a 
master carpenter in a small way. 

In the late sixties and early seventies of the last century, 
this town of Thornlea enjoyed its customary ups and downs. 
Its chief trade languished or flourished, affected by causes 
which few in the town clearly understood, and no one could 
control. And the ups and downs of shoddy were necessarily 
the ups and downs of the little shop in the Cliff Road, and, by 
consequence, of the little four-room-and-scullery cottage in 
Balaklava Terrace, just on the wrong side of the line between 
Lower and Upper Thornlea. 

Into the varying fortunes of this cottage and this shop came 
Bartelmy, first-born of Luke and Hannah Bonafede, at the 
slack period between the ending of the Civil War in America 
and the beginning of Napoleon the Little’s grandiose adventure 
which finished so flatly at Sedan. 

When little Bartelmy was ready for dame school, Thornlea 
began to have one of its flush intervals. The Franco-Prussian 
War gave Bartelmy a dame-school education. 

Then came the debacle of Sedan, the siege of Paris, the tri¬ 
umphal entry of the Prussian king, on his way to become, at 
Versailles, the German Emperor. Then the Commune. And 
the bottom dropped out of the shoddy market. 

As shoddy orders fell off, the carpenter jobs which depended 
on them became fewer in number and more difficult to get 

7 


8 


SHODDY 


themselves paid for. Luke Bonafede in spirit was gentle and 
sensitive, and when the slack days came, he had more worries 
than the lack of work. Even in good times he managed badly 
the simple bookkeeping which his shop required, but in dull 
times his troubles began with the first entries in cash book and 
journal, and progressed by increasing distresses to the agonies 
of collection. 

As Bartlemy came to be ten years old or so, the bad trade 
had become, if anything, worse. And his father practiced a 
weak man’s evasion by using the boy for the more distasteful 
collection errands. 

On a Saturday night in the black time, therefore, he gave 
Bartelmy a note to deliver. 

“Wash thisen a bit, an’ tak’ that to Mr. Jessop, on Abbey 
Ridge,” he said. “Happen ’e’ll pay it this time; it’s little 
enough, an’ ’e’s made plenty a’ promises. If ’e does pay it, 
we’ll ’ave a roast pork supper when tha’ comes back. Careful 
tha’ duzent lose a penny, nah!” 

Bartelmy’s mother was at her knitting. The knitting must 
go on, be the fortunes of the family for the moment good or 
bady. She knit all the children’s stockings, and Luke’s as 
well. As for darning, Luke sometimes said that he never really 
enjoyed wearing his stockings until Hannah had darned them a 
bit. 

Hannah Bonafede looked up from her needles, without stop¬ 
ping her work; a slender, once comely woman, and still not 
unpleasant to the eye. Her friends said she had married be¬ 
neath her. Certainly her accent and manner had touches of 
a world beyond Balaklava Terrace, and she scorned to use the 
accent of her neighbors, though she had more than a trace of 
the local idiom. 

“Nay, Luke, why forever send the lad? A great big man 
like you—what’s to hinder you going yourself?” 

But Luke Bonafede, well aware, were he to undertake the 
errand up Abbey Ridge, that Mr. Jessop would be certain to 
find some new excuse for putting him off, shrank from the en¬ 
counter as if it were some physical torment. He had no shame 
for this weakness, any more than for his trick of relapsing, in 
spite of his wife’s tutelage in proper speech, into the broad 
Yorkshire of the shop and the mill. 

“Tha’ knaws, Hannah,” he told his wife, mildly, “ony man 


SHODDY 


9 


can manage me. They mak’ silly excuses, an’ Ah knaw they’re 
silly, but Ah alius find misen ahtside t’door, wi’ no brass; an’ 
all. Ah can remember is the way Ah axed ther’ pardon for wor¬ 
ritin’ me betters. Bartelmy cannot do waur, an’ ’e isn’t so easy 
shamed.” 

“Yes, father,” Hannah said, “I know how you feel. But 
you don’t consider the lad. He is ’shamed. He has no better 
stomach for this sort of thing than you have. If you would 
just make up your mind not to be put upon, you could make 
Jessop pay, and all the lot.” 

“Well, that’s reight enough;” admitted Luke, “but Ah just 
can’t, and theer’s an end. If Bartelmy’s not to fetch t’ money, 
then w T e mun mak’ shift wi’out it.” 

“Make shift, you may well say,” Mrs. Bonafede repeated, 
acidly. “I know what that means. Isn’t there even a few 
shillings left from the shop takings this week?” 

Luke sighed. “Nay, how could ther’ be? Ther’ was nobbut 
ten shillin’ for Sylvester, an’ ’e grumbled rarely ovver that. 
Sed ’e wor good enough joiner to deserve a paand. But ther’ 
were nowt more in the till.” 

“Well,” said his wife, with a touch of bitterness as she 
echoed his words, “I’ve ’nowt more’ in the house, either. Even 
if we got any money now, there’s no chance for a Sunday joint, 
though I nearly forgotten what a decent bit of beef tastes like. 
There’s some bread in the piggin, and we’ve enough tea and 
rhubarb for our breakfast in the morning, and a bit of oatmeal 
for the children’s porridge. And that’s all, Luke, my man. 
You ought to know by now what I have to do with. There’s 
bound to be an end of contriving, sometime.” 

With the smell of soap still on him, his neck-scarf tied under 
his chin and the ends tucked into his coat, Bartelmy set out 
obediently but forlornly enough, carrying the Jessop bill and a 
respectfully appealing note addressed to “Samuel Jessop, Esq.” 

Like other Thornlea worthies, literally of the shoddy aristoc¬ 
racy,—the Tanners, the Issots, the Savilles,—Samuel Jessop 
had laid the foundation of his fortune in the days, then not 
long past, of the Franco-Prussian war. 

A Thornlea man he was through and through; illiterate, can¬ 
ny ; with a streak of nearness all his own. He was still so close 
to his days of struggle that their more obvious marks were not 
yet worn away. The very house toward which Bartelmy 


10 


SHODDY 


clumped in his clogs on this raw autumn night was a shameless 
revelation of the Jessop preference for expensive and ostenta¬ 
tious ugliness. 

The fame of his “elegant modern villa-mansion” was no mere 
local repute. It had reached to London itself, and had been 
immortalized in the sacred pages of Punch. As Punch got the 
story, Sam Jessop, then rapidly becoming rich, and struggling 
mightily to become the “Samuel Jessop, Esq.” of Luke Bona- 
fede’s note, bought an eligible site on Abbey Ridge, in later 
days referred to always by Thornlea cynics as Shoddy Hill, and 
gave an unlucky architect the commission and those successive 
instructions in design and ornament which had resulted in this 
ornate monstrosity. 

In one of the early consultations, the architect, with bland 
and flattering deference, inquired, “And what sort of an aspect 
had you thought the house should have, Mr. Jessop?” 

“Haspect?” that worthy climber had repeated, as nearly as 
the unfamiliar word and his own untempered tongue allowed, 
“haspect? Wot’s that? Does it go wi’ a right mansion? ’As 
Walter Tanner’s new ’ouse got one? ’Cos if it ’as, let’s ’ave 
one just like ’is, on’y bigger!” 

ii 

It was to this “Norfolk Lodge” and its bigger “haspect” that 
Bartelmy had come on his unwanted and dubious errand. He 
knew his place, and went to the back entrance, which the cook 
opened at his timid knock. Cook, almost at the last of her 
Saturday work, was fairly cheerful in the prospect of early bed 
and late getting up the next morning. Besides, in her heart she 
liked boys, as good cooks do. 

“Sit yo’ daan, lad,” she said, friendly enough. “Sit yo’ 
daan o’ that chair, while I take yore letter to Mester Jessop in 
t’ libr’y.” 

So here sat Bartelmy, from his straight-backed chair survey¬ 
ing the kitchen of what was to him a great house. It was evi¬ 
dence, to his awed eyes, not of mere money, but of limitless 
wealth. 

He gazed at the rows of gleaming utensils hanging on the 
walls. His mother had two or three iron cooking vessels. His 
eye measured the wide and deep range. The kitchen at Balak- 
lava Terrace had the usual little open fire, with a tiny oven on 


SHODDY 


11 


one side and an iron water-box on the other. Different as its 
appurtenances were from the equipment of his mother’s kit¬ 
chen, the Jessop display was not exactly a mystery. It was 
merely unbelievably lavish and rich; scaled to proportions far 
outside what ordinary humans could need or even use. 

To Bartelmy it had an authentic eloquence. It spoke of 
feasting, not of meals. It suggested the glorious opulences of 
a perpetual Christmas. He could well imagine this kitchen as 
a shrine where geese and fowls and turkeys became glorified 
burnt offerings; or an exposition hall to which vegetable mar¬ 
row, and pineapples, and kidney potatoes, and huge roasts of 
beef, and legs of mutton, and meat pies, and deep dishes of 
fruit overlaid with delectable brown crusts, and sponge cakes, 
and pastries, and Stilton cheese, came and went in profuse and 
endless richness. 

That he had begun the day with bread and dripping and tea, 
and that his noonday meal had been dry bread and a rind of 
cheese and more tea, and that his supper, if Mr. Jessop proved 
in complaisant mood, would be a slice of roast pork, bought 
ready cooked from the pork butcher’s, or, if his errand proved 
futile, just nothing at all—this did not prevent him from con¬ 
juring up visions of the feasts which this mighty kitchen must 
regularly produce, not as a magician produces marvels from his 
hat. His child’s imagination was quickened by the certainty 
that for him any supper whatever must depend on the word 
which would presently issue from the library. 

And, of course, the word was—no supper. The commercial 
aspect of the unpaid bill meant little to Bartelmy, but when 
the kindly cook brought her message, gently enough, he would 
have died before he would have told her what bitterness of 
meaning her words held for him and the Bonafedes who awaited 
his return. There it was;, no supper. Also, as he could not 
forget, no Sunday dinner. His mother had made that clear. 

“Mester says,” so cook reported, with the air of one reciting 
a formula, “he thinks the bill ought not to ’ave been brought 
so late in the day, and a Saturday, too. He ’asn’t enough 
money in the ’ouse to pay it now, because ’e’s paid out all he 
thought to bring ’ome. Says he’ll send in and pay it some day 
next week.” 

Cook, discerning the child’s utter dejection, suddenly dropped 
her messenger’s tone and accent. 


12 


SHODDY 


“Nay, but tha’s hungry, bairn. Ah can see that, plain. Here, 
let me cut thee a slice o’ bread an’ butter. Tha’ can eyt it as 
tha’ gooas hooam.” 

Swiftly and expertly she cut, not one slice, but two, and 
spread the butter royally, scorning resort to Thornlea’s thrifty 
trick of scraping most of it off again. In a generous excess of 
pity she turned out the last third of a jar of Dundee marma¬ 
lade, and smeared that ambrosia thickly over the butter. 

“Nah,” she said, in purest Thornlea, “tha’s gotten summat 
to stay thi stummick for an ’aar or two;” and turned away 
from Bartelmy’s confused thanks. 

The boy who plodded slowly and, despite the good bread he 
munched, unhappily down Abbey Ridge Road had not yet 
learned, if he ever did, to analyze his feelings. But he knew 
he was the center of a black and impotent misery. His fre¬ 
quent hunger was the acute part of it, but back of the hunger 
was the old desperate fear that he would always be hungry, the 
fear that had been with him all his childhood. Hunger might 
be the proper and necessary thing for people like him and his; 
he didn’t know. Proper or not, he hated the Jessops and all 
their sort, not for being rich, but for keeping him from his slice 
of roast pork. 

The windows of the houses, gas-lit and cheery, into which he 
looked on the way home added to his dull, resentful distress. 
For in some of them he could see, through the Nottingham cur¬ 
tains, the familiar signs of Saturday night supper impending. It 
was a little early for the full flavor of that rite, but an occa¬ 
sional housewife relished the observance the more, since she 
knew it for a sort of spendthrift joy, and must needs set the 
table while yet her family lingered among the shops and stalls 
of the High Street. The late supper of Saturday night is an 
ancient institution; it holds a flavor of secular license which the 
Sunday dinner, climax of the week’s provisioning though it may 
be, is unable, by reason of the day’s austerities, to offer. 

His mother, inured as she was to respectable Christian pov¬ 
erty and orthodox Christian resignation, would have been 
shocked if she had guessed the wickedness of her little boy’s 
thoughts. For a ten-year-old boy, who lived in a four-room 
cottage and went to the Wesleyan Chapel, to think as he did 
about a gentleman like Mr. Jessop, who lived in a mansion and 
went to Church, just because that gentleman did not find it 


SHODDY 


13 


convenient, late on Saturday night, to pay a tradesman’s tri¬ 
fling bill, was very naughty indeed. And this Bartelmy could 
have found out, not only at home, but at his Sunday School on 
Spring Wood Hill, if he had ever asked. But asking for infor¬ 
mation on the boundaries of ethics was something little Wes¬ 
leyan boys took special pains never to do. They were told 
enough, as it was. 

When he got home the younger children were in bed. Their 
mother had told them, with a choke in her throat, that if Bart 
had good luck she would waken them when he came back, and 
they could come down to supper. She was not greatly surprised, 
nor, to be sure, was his father, when the boy came home with 
nothing but Mr. Jessop’s cheap excuse and easy promise, and 
half the bread and marmalade. 

“We’ll save that for the little ’uns in the morning,” said his 
mother shortly. 

He slid into bed beside his two smaller brothers, and fell 
asleep by and by, exhausted by hunger, silent tears, and by 
his wishes that manifold disaster might come upon all who owed 
his father money and would not pay. 

hi 

Next morning’s breakfast was a dreary thing. Mrs. Bona- 
fede got it over as quickly as possible. Then she put on a 
shawl over her house dress, which was quite the correct mode 
at so early an hour, but which would have scandalized Thorn- 
lea if seen two hours later, and went out by the back door. 
All the Bonafedes knew where she was going, and her word as 
she let go the door-snek was addressed to nobody in particular. 
“I’m going over to grandfather’s,” she said. Grandfather’s was 
a retreat always open, but not to be used save in extremity. 

Luke Bonafede sat in the “room,” aimlessly picking out tunes 
from “Hymns Ancient and Modern” on the squeaky little har¬ 
monium, as was his Sunday morning habit, observed more 
faithfully, if anything, in bad times than in good. 

Soon Mrs. Bonafede was back. “We’re to go to grand¬ 
father’s for dinner,” she said to Bartelmy, who was wiping out 
the clumsy panshon, after washing up the breakfast things. 
“Tell your father.” 

There was no need. All hands knew. In the room father 


14 


SHODDY 


was running his great stumpy fingers over the keys, and sing¬ 
ing, in rather pleasant tenor, one of his favorite minor tunes 
from the old book. 

“We’re to go to grandfather’s for dinner, father,” Bartelmy 
said, not as a news bringer, but merely because he had been 
told to say it. And Luke Bonafede scarcely interrupted his 
singing to answer, “I thowt as much. All reight.” 

So everything might have gone on to the end of the Thorn- 
lea chapter, with no beginning of any other. But a Christmas 
came which was unlike other Christmases. Instead of a little 
work; none. Instead of an occasional dinner at Grandfather 
Oldroyd’s many meals there; and increasing gloominess at 
home. 

It was Betsey Bennett, grandfather’s old housekeeper, who 
set in motion the machinery of change. One day when the 
Bonafedes had gone back to Balkalava Terrace after Betsey 
had given them their tea (a knife-and fork affair it was, too— 
no mere formality of thin tea, thinner bread and vanishing 
butter), she came in from the kitchen, giving her wrinkled 
hands a final wipe on her apron. 

Betsey, for all her grimness, had a heart. And she was a 
woman with more privileges than she usually cared to exercise. 
Just now she intended to speak plainly to her employer, and 
she knew he would not rebuke her. 

“Mester,” she said, as she stood before his chair, “Yo’ knawed 
when Luke Bonafede wed Hannah that it wor a chancy 
match.” 

Jonas Oldroyd nodded. “I knew that, Betsey,” he said, 
“but they cared for each other, and do yet, for aught I know. 
But happen something’s wrong; is there?” 

“Nowt wrang,” Betsey admitted; “they get on as weel as 
ony, an’ better nor some. But everybody knaws ’at trade’s 
bad. Luke’s out o’work. When he’ll get summat to do, noa- 
body knaws. You’re feeding him an’ his ommost all t’ time, 
an’ a body can see he dusna like it. Noa honest man wod.” 

The old man was puzzled. He knew Betsey was driving at 
something; but what? 

“Wumman,” he said, in mock severity, “you have something 
on your mind. I can see that. Come now; out with it.” 

“Well, Mester,” said Betsey with a frosty smile, “if yo’re 
offended, yo’ll just ha’ to be offended. But it’s in ma mind to 


SHODDY 


\ 


IS 


ax you’, wi’ yo’re wife long deead, and not no other childer, 
what yo’ meean to do for Hannah in t’ long run?” 

“Why, Betsey, what are you thinking about? Do you mean 
what do I intend to leave her when I die?” 

“Ah, that’s it,” and Betsey looked grim again, though inside 
she was as soft as butter, and Grandfather Oldroyd knew it. 

So he said, “That’s a bit of a question, Betsey. To tell you 
the truth, there won’t be as much as I could wish, but what¬ 
ever it is will be for Hannah and her children.” 

Betsey spread her hands wide. “Then why not let ’em ’ave 
some on it nah an’ saave ’em eytin’ t’bread o’ charity?” 

“My bread is not the bread of charity,” he said with a sus¬ 
picion of resentment; “they’re my flesh and blood, and if I 
choose to do my duty by them, who’s to say me nay?” 

“Noaboddy but Luke himself,” Betsey countered. “He’s 
nooan o’ yo’r flesh an’ blood, if t’ others are, an’ he’s got his 
proper feelin’s. But, Mester,” and her pleading heart crept in¬ 
to her voice, “yo’ can do yo’r duty better nor this way. Could¬ 
n’t yo’ lay yo’r hands on a hundred paand, if yo’ thowt it wod 
set Luke on another rooad, an’ mak’ him t’ upstandin’ joiner 
he used to be?” 

“I could, of course, with a little contriving,” Grandfather 
Oldroyd admitted. “But what lasting good would it do? It 
would soon be spent.” 

Betsey unlimbered her biggest gun, knowing that it would 
shake his foundations, but sure that nothing less would do. 

“Mester Oldroyd,” she said slowly, “Hannah’s alius been my 
favorite, iver sin’ she wor a little ’un, an’ it stands to natur’ 
yo’ care for her more nor I do. An’ Ah’m fond of t’ childer, 
too. Soa it’s nowt as Ah want to say; but if Luke Bonafede 
could get to America wi’ his wife an’ bairns he could mak’ a 
new beginnin’. He’ll niver do it i’ Thornlea.” 

The old man was shaken. But not so much as Betsey had 
feared. She did not know that the same idea had occurred to 
him more than once. 

After a few moments, he asked her, “Betsey, what makes 
you so sure about America?” 

“Why, that scapegrace nevvy o’ mine in a place they call 
Philadelphia. He worn’t much here, but he writes that he’s 
drawin’ gooid money theer, an’ ’e says men wi’ trades can alius 
get a job.” 


16 


SHODDY 


“Well, Betsey, I’ll admit I’ve thought sometimes that Ameri¬ 
ca might be the best way out for Luke. I know he must be 
troubled, more than his need will let him say, about what little 
we do for them. The one thing that has held me back is that 
if they go, we shall be more alone than ever, you and I, in this 
old house.” 

“That’s reight, Mester”, Betsey conceded, “an’ it’s been a 
worry i’ ma mind, too. But we’re owd, us two. Ah can’t 
serve yo’ many more years, an’ yo’r awn work is ommost done. 
P’raps t’ wisest thing we can do in aar owd age is to help these 
young ’uns get a new start. An’ Ah believe they’d rather have 
one big help nah an’ be done wi’ it than get all these meals, 
’at reminds ’em iv’ry day abaht ha’ poor they are.” 

“I suppose,” said Grandfather Oldroyd, “that we must’t 
think of our own feelings. And no doubt Hannah would rather 
get a little money from me now than think she could get it 
only by my death. We’ll look into this America idea of yours, 
at any rate.” 

And that was the beginning of the end of Thornlea for the 
Bonafedes. The “America idea” was looked into, by Grand¬ 
father Oldroyd, by Luke and his wife, and, by Bartelmy also, 
although nobody had asked him to consider it. He studied the 
big atlases in the Free Library. He spent hours with the 
Scientific American and the two great American magazines 
which the library boasted, Harper’s and The Century. 

The investigations by the others were not more fascinating, 
but they produced more immediate results. A passage was 
booked for Luke Bonafede in February. He was to go first, 
and to Philadelphia. Then, as soon as he found a steady job, 
he was to send for the rest of the family. 

February came, and Luke Bonafede vanished into the west. 
After four long weeks of waiting for it, the letter arrived an¬ 
nouncing his safe arrival. Betsey’s nephew had met him, and 
he had found work almost the first day, but he was not sure 
how long it would last. 

It lasted only a month, and Luke wrote that he had been 
told New York was a better field for his special sort of skill. 
So he was going to New York at once. 

That proved a good move. He found a job, and fair wages, 
and a good prospect of steady employment. After a few weeks 
the prospect became a practical certainty, and the waiting 


SHODDY 17 

Bonafedes greeted joyfully his welcome message, “Come as 
soon as you can.” 

The end of May found them on the swiftest ship of her 
time, the “Alaska” of the Guion Line, and, on a lovely morning 
of early June, Bartelmy, hanging over the rail as the ship came 
up the North River, and scanning the crowd on the dock-end, 
said to everybody, “I see father!” 

IV 

Bartelmy’s days in New York were not many, but while they 
lasted they set forward his education far beyond Thornlea’s 
imaginings. 

He got a job; at fifteen he was looking back at school as 
part of the old world. Here all things had become new. Who 
would go to school, when three dollars a week—twelve shillings, 
no less—could be had at the start in June, rising to four dol¬ 
lars by January? 

Ostensibly office boy to a firm of Broadway lawyers, Bart¬ 
elmy found himself a much more useful functionary. He was 
the daily joy of half a dozen law-students, who appraised his 
perfect British quality at its full. They chortled over his 
clothes, his “boots”, his mop of unbarbered hair, but most of 
all over the richly-flavored Yorkshire of his speech. They were 
New Yorkers of the keenest; and here was something delicious¬ 
ly different. He was the unconscious evoker of a wealth of 
salty humor whose discovery made these law clerks think 
themselves as good as Bill Nye. 

Bartelmy was yet far from knowing how to meet that sort of 
public attention. He knew that it was not flattering, and he 
didn’t like it. So he sought the shortest way to end it. 

The shortest way, of course, as always, was conformity. So 
he forced himself to hobnob with other office boys, in spite of 
their quite obvious delight in “de greenhorn.” He lunched at 
street stands, sharing three-cent lemonade and two-cent sinkers 
with chance acquaintances among newsboys. He learned to 
hop the tail of a truck, greasy with commerce from the docks 
and William Street, whereby he was able to study the vernac¬ 
ular at the source. From the cashier he borrowed money for a 
new suit, bought in the showiest clothing store on the Bowery, 
and therefore shoddy enough to feel natural. He endured the 


18 


SHODDY 


embarrassing ministrations of a Park Row tonsorial parlor, 
whose high priest celebrated over his head such mystic rites as 
Thornlea’s barber, Toshy Bishop, would have thought sheer 
swank, if not superstition. And he read the Evening Journal 
of that day, a new venture whose four pages of flippant froth 
seemed to Bartelmy the essence of all wit and wisdom. 

But things were not going well on East Eighty-first street. 
The dark rooms, the uncomprehending neighbors, the smells, 
and those drear unoccupied hours which afforded no antidote 
for the immigrant’s deadly homesickness, were slowly breaking 
Hannah Bonafede’s fine courage. 

It was something distinctly to her credit that she com¬ 
plained only when she must. One day she said to her man, 
“Luke, lad, this surely isn’t America. They told us it was 
such a big place. But here we are in far poorer rooms than our 
old house at Thornlea, and I’ve nowhere to go when I get out¬ 
side ’em. I’m afraid, Luke; afraid I’ll give up, and that’s 
something neither of us can afford. What’s to be done?” 

Luke had guessed, before Hannah spoke, how nearly spent 
she was. He knew that she would not speak as long as she 
could fight her battle with any sort of hope. 

“What think yo’, lass?” His question was at once recogni¬ 
tion of the problem and confession of dismay. “What is to be 
done?” 

“Nay, Luke, I cannot say. But something. There’s the 
children with no chance, too. They won’t go to school; every¬ 
body’s at ’em. And I’m not fit to take their part. If we stay 
here, we’ll soon be getting to be fair heathen. We can’t seem 
to get used to the churches, an’ when you come home you’ve 
just your pipe and the paper and bed. Happen your pipe is 
some comfort, but you know I can’t smoke. Oh, Luke,” and 
deep yearning spoke in her voice, “we came to America for a 
better chance. Let’s get away from this place. New York isn’t 
America; it can’t be. Don’t you think we might begin to look 
for the America they told us about?” 

“Well, lass, it’s a bit queer that tha’ should ask that. 
Theer’s a chap where I work ’as been talkin’ to me the very 
same way. He’s ’eard of a lot of building ’at’s goin’ on sum- 
wheer up V country at a place called Nepperhan, an’ he says 
yo’ can live in reight houses, wi’ grass an’ a tree or two abaht. 


SHODDY 


19 


Ah’ve well nigh promised him to go an’ look it ovver next 
Sunda’. Let’s booath try it; it’s nooan so far, he says.” 

They tried it; the whole family of them. The boys walked 
the endless blocks down Third Avenue to Forty-second Street 
and the Grand Central Depot, and all took train for Nepperhan. 
Almost before they had fairly found themselves, in the strange, 
long coaches, the train thundered out of the tunnel and swung 
round the curves of Spuyten Duyvil, and their amazed eyes 
feasted on the lordly Hudson and the towering Palisades. After 
a few miles of that glorious panorama, they came to Nepper¬ 
han. Up beyond the business center were green things a-grow- 
ing, and “reight” houses. Sure enough, there were buildings 
in process, and Luke felt confident he could get taken on. 

“But what about Bartelmy?” asked Hannah, as homeward 
bound, they were dreading the grim tenement after their day of 
unaccustomed brightness. 

And Bartelmy spoke up with—for him—a new confidence 
which almost alarmed his mother. He had not fellowshiped in 
vain with New York’s office boys. “Never mind about me. I 
can get a job anywhere,” he said, and, within a week after they 
moved to Nepperhan, proceeded to do so. His resignation from 
the Broadway law office had been without regret on either side. 

In those days Nepperhan had a dock or two, and a steam¬ 
boat service to New York. The boat, “Katie Mylius”, daily 
carried down river a few score passengers and much freight 
from the riverside factories; and brought back all sorts of raw 
materials for the factories and produce for the suburban stores. 
And one evening Bartelmy came home and reported himself 
possessed of a job; four dollars a week as shipping and receiv¬ 
ing clerk on the Mylius dock. “Got it because I write a good 
hand,” he explained. 


v 

It was a short and inglorious career. While Luke Bonafede 
worked faithfully on commuters’ new houses, and the other 
Bonafedes were happy in a five-room cottage far up the hill, 
within walking distance of his work, Bartelmy, from his shanty 
office at the dock-end, contrived each day a worse confusion 
than the last. He had found himself in one place whose law 
perforce was accuracy; its goal, completeness. When he failed 


20 


SHODDY 


to notice three rolls of carpet or two crates of cabbage, so that 
they were missing from his tally sheets, the office asked caustic 
questions, and seemed to expect civil answers. 

One Saturday night, when he stopped for his pay envelope 
at the office near the dock’s landward end, the head clerk broke 
the news to him as gently as he could, for he had been drawn 
to Bartelmy because of the sheer friendliness of the boy. 

“Cap’n Frank Mylius says to tell you you’d better look for 
another job, Bartelmy. He says your handwriting is better 
than most, but you don’t seem to know how to count and 
check. And counting and checking isn’t just a catch-as-catch- 
can business; it makes you or breaks you, when you’re sup¬ 
posed to be handling stuff that has to be paid for.” 

Bartelmy’s heart began to thump. Then you could lose your 
job, even in America! Something he thought the Bonafedes 
had left behind in Yorkshire had followed him—he was out of 
work! Not that he liked work, or had any interest in its mean¬ 
ing, but the terror of being jobless was in his marrow, and he 
had thought America a place which would make that terror im¬ 
potent. It did not occur to him to ask why his job was gone. 
“Jobs came and went. That was the way with jobs, in England. 
Evidently in America, too. 

Already he was too big a boy to cry before men, but Book¬ 
keeper Onderdonk saw the fear in his eyes, and thought to 
allay it. 

“I’ll tell you what to do, Bartelmy. You need country air. 
That hole of an office on the dock is no place for a boy like 
you—and gaslight is bad for your eyes. My wife’s brother has 
a dairy farm up the Putnam line a ways; and he told me the 
other day he wanted a boy. How would you like farm life?” 

Bartelmy didn’t know. He had never tried it, and knew less 
than nothing about it. But try it he would, if it was a job. He 
would try anything. Without thought, without effort, his 
whole concern was centered on getting rid of the terror. 

In New York he had taken the first work that offered. In 
Nepperhan likewise. And he would do it again. He had no 
desire to wait, to compare one job with another, to think what 
sort of future one or the other might offer. Blindly he grasped 
at Onderdonk’s suggestion. 

Bartelmy went homeward up the hill that night with more 
than the usual weariness of the long day to subdue him. He 


SHODDY 


21 


sobbed out his story at his mother’s knee; and after the first 
moment of dismay she comforted him as mothers must; but 
he knew she did it all the easier because he had prospects. 
Farm meant no more to her than to her child; only a job. Fa¬ 
ther Luke was sympathetic, but, as usual, neither resourceful 
nor communicative. 


VI 

Monday morning found Bartelmy exploring the wilds of the 
Putnam Division. Following Onderdonk’s directions, he left 
the train at North Prospect, and struck out under the August 
sun. 

He had been walking for perhaps an hour when the buildings 
just ahead of him seemed to fit the description Onderdonk had 
given him of Uncle Joseph Van Tassel’s place. A low house 
stood on a hillside giving down on the little river; a house 
overshadowed by century-old trees, with farm buildings beyond, 
and what even Bartelmy could guess was an orchard on the up¬ 
per side of the road. 

Now Bartelmy had his manners with him, in spite of his be¬ 
wilderment away from town streets and buildings, so Mrs. Van 
Tassel, washing the milk things on the back stoop, was quite 
taken with her first impression of this lad of evidently alien 
speech, standing before her with cap in hand. 

“So you want to work for us, do you? Well, you look as if 
you needed feeding, too. You’ll find Mr. Van Tassel down in 
the pickle field yonder.” And she pointed to a square plot of 
green and brown two hundred yards away, where Bartelmy 
could see a sort of shelter, and figures moving among the green 
rows. 

Joseph Van Tassel, spare and harried-looking, was one of 
those Yankee-Dutch blends in whom the traditional marks of 
his ancestry had almost cancelled each other out. Because he 
was not thrifty as the Dutch are thrifty, nor shrewd as repute 
has made the Connecticut Yankee shrewd, he had not greatly 
prospered. Indeed, he had the disposition of a frustrated soul. 
The farm—a scant sixty acres of stony ground—had been in 
the family since Washington’s time, and its owner was the only 
son of his father. So he must needs work the farm. 

At the moment of Bartelmy’s advent, Van Tassel, his three 


22 


SHODDY 


daughters and Jacob Betz, the hired man, not long over from a 
Suabian village, were “picking pickles”. A fourth girl was 
helping a little, and talking more. Bartelmy assumed, of course, 
that every American farm grew these things called “pickles”, 
but really it was a rather specialized business, undertaken be¬ 
cause the three-inch cucumbers, which were not yet pickles but 
destined so to be, were a cash crop when delivered at the salt¬ 
ing station two miles away. 

“So Abe sent you up, did he?” Bartelmy understood him to 
mean Bookkeeper Abram Onderdonk, and said Yes; Mr. On- 
derdonk had told him that Mr. Van Tassel wanted a boy. 

“Well, so I do,” admitted that individual, “but I do’ know 
as I want you. You look pretty peaked. What have you been 
doin’?” 

Bartelmy told him about the dock shanty. 

“On the Mylius’ dock, eh? Well, you show it. That’s not 
much of a place for a youngster. Do you know anything about 
farming?” 

Bartelmy said he didn’t, but his prospective employer could 
not possibly fathom the depth of the ignorance which that 
truthful word connoted. Before the day was over he had more 
hints of it. Bartelmy also; and through a long, blistered and 
muscle-tortured month the evidence appeared daily in fresh 
and painful abundance. 

For the brief moment that Van Tassel hesitated, Bartelmy’s 
heart was cold with dread. He would be told he did not seem 
likely to suit, and he would have to go home with nothing to 
show for this weary journey into farthest America. 

But the farmer was thinking of his dark morning drives' to 
Tarrytown with the milk, and of the steps his last boy had 
saved him in making deliveries, and of the consequent earlier 
return to the day’s work of the farm, and of much beside. 

So he said, to Bartelmy’s glad surprise—it was the gladness 
of an illimitable ignorance—“When can you come?” 

And Bartelmy said simply, “Now! ” He added that he would 
need to go home for his things when the day’s work should be 
over, but he was ready for his job on the spot. 

“All right,” said the farmer, “you might as well climb over 
the fence now and begin on these pickles. They’re getting 
ahead of us, and it lacks an hour to dinner time.” 

Whereupon Bartelmy, shedding his coat, began what proved 


SHODDY 


23 


a six-weeks’ torment among the cucumber vines. For when 
these vines begin to bear, they must be picked every day. 
Even a Sunday’s interval makes Monday’s picking a double 
torture. The first hour seemed interminable; when it did end 
he wondered how he could ever again get a straight back. 

Dinner cheered him, though. It was abundant, and rich past 
all his experience. Grandfather Oldroyd’s table was poverty, 
to this. Great slices of ham, with gravy that kings might gloat 
over; a mountain of mashed potatoes, smooth and rich with 
milk and butter; new bread, all the more delicious that at home 
new bread was forbidden as unhealthy; jellies and apple butter, 
and fairly intoxicating coffee; and at the last a noble confec¬ 
tion which they called a pie, but which Bartelmy would have 
called a tart if it hadn’t been so huge. 

After the first few minutes at the table, he found courage to 
sort out the family and distinguish its components. There were 
three daughters, a tall one, a slimly graceful one, and a little, 
leggy one. As for the visitor, everybody was calling her “Ef- 
fie”. Bartelmy thought she must be about his own age. Her 
ease and lightness of manner seemed to him simply wonderful; 
he had never known a girl so self-possessed and so lively. And 
she, greatly to his confusion, asked the other girls if they didn’t 
think his accent too cute for words. He had flattered himself 
that by his New York efforts he had effaced the mark of Thorn- 
lea. 

At supper, there was actually meat again! As he rode 
with Jake Betz in the buckboard to the station, he rehearsed 
to himself the day’s pains and marvels, that he might not for¬ 
get anything of them when he came to sit by his mother and the 
others and tell the story of the crowded hours. 

The next morning, by arrangement, he met Joseph Van Tas¬ 
sel in Tarry town, and rode back to the farm to the tune of the 
rattling empty milk cans in the front of the wagon. 

VII 

The complete story of Bartelmy Bonafede’s farm days in 
the shadow of the Buttermilk Hills would be a moving tale of 
discoveries, follies, accidents, labors unceasing, new muscles, 
new interests. 

He quite won the heart of the Dutch Reformed pastor at 


24 


SHODDY 


Westchester Center, by cataloging the Sunday School library 
for him—Farmer Van Tassel consenting—on two consecutive 
rainy Saturdays, and good Mr. Kuypers sounded him out 
about the possibility of school, with college to follow, and the 
seminary at New Brunswick to crown it all. 

But Bartelmy knew nothing of American schools, and he had 
put school behind him when the family left Thornlea. As to 
college and seminary, Pastor Kuypers might have been talking 
about seats of learning in Siberia or New Zealand. Neverthe¬ 
less, Bartelmy did let himself be taken into the church. One 
Sunday he was called up before the consistory, and made his 
confession of faith, with little emotion and less understanding. 

The event took on added significance when he saw that the 
only other candidate for church membership was that same Effie 
Bailey, who, on his first day at the farm, had thought his ac¬ 
cent too cute for words. 

She was demure enough before the consistory, but once out¬ 
side she said, “Well, Bart, I hope you’ll not forget who stood 
by you today.” 

By little and by little he found out from the Van Tassel girls 
about Effie. Her folks lived far up the road beyond Laurel, and 
the milk from their five cows supplemented the output of the 
Van Tassel herd. The total filled the three or four forty-quart 
cans of milk whose contents Bartelmy and his employer dis¬ 
tributed every morning and twice on Saturday to their custom¬ 
ers in Tarry town. 

So Effie was often at Sawmill River Farm. Sometimes she 
drove over alone, on a buckboard, with cans of milk strapped 
behind the seat. And always she brought a strange disquiet, 
not*unpleasant, to the Van Tassel’s hired boy, who found farm¬ 
ing so full of esoteric knowledge. 

Every Sunday afternoon, Bartelmy sought his own entertain¬ 
ment. He explored the. attic through which he passed to and 
from the bedroom he shared with Jacob Betz. A couple of 
boxes piled with old papers supplied a miscellaneous literature 
through which he plowed steadily, Sunday by Sunday. 

The stuff that he read most eagerly was a batch of Western 
railway booklets and advertisements, printed tokens of the 
period’s feverish railroad building. They had been sent to 
Arthur Bailey, Effie’s father, and by him passed on to the Van 
Tassels. Somewhere in the vague and wonderful West the 


SHODDY 


25 


Baileys had kindred—in the Sawmill River Valley the “West” 
was anywhere on the far side of York State. And this “liter¬ 
ature” left little to the imagination, except to wonder how so 
many and varied marvels could be included in one “West”. He 
began to think he would like to go there. Farming seemed so 
easy, and the soil so prolific. 

When he had been at the farm for seven or eight months, and 
spring with its harder work was coming, Mr. Van Tassel 
doubled his wages, so that he was drawing eight dollars a 
month. On his occasional Sundays at home, his mother had 
ready for him such clothes as she had been able to pick up in 
places he never heard of, and he gave her the few dollars of 
his pay. She was happy in her church work, for which she 
found much more time than in Thornlea, and she was making 
friends. Father Luke had his steady job and fifteen dollars a 
week; no more, no less; and the two younger boys were in 
school, so Bartelmy knew he could ask for no help at home, 
even if they should look with favor on his hope of getting to 
the West. 

Effie Bailey and he talked about the West now and then. 
She had felt the lure of it, too. 

“They need teachers out there,” she told him, “and I’m go¬ 
ing to be a teacher. Why shouldn’t I teach where there’s a 
chance to get ahead instead of here where every other old maid 
in the place is ready to take the first school that’s vacant?” 

“I don’t know what they need,” commented Bartelmy, “but 
that’s the place for farm work. Why, in the Arkansas Valley 
they say a man could plow a straight furrow until noon, turn 
around, get back home at night, and never hit a stone. Last 
spring I took forty stone-boat loads off the rye field, and it’ll 
have forty more to be picked up this fall. I believe someway 
the stones are all the time pushed up from under. The Van 
Tassels have been moving ’em off these fields every year since 
the Civil War.” 

“Yes,” Effie countered, “I know. But farming is farming, 
everywhere. If it doesn’t mean stones it means some other 
sort of hard work. But why don’t you try to get out there, if 
you are so tired of this place?” 

“Just because. It’s a long way from here, and I don’t know 
anybody out there. Suppose I couldn’t get a job?” 

“Jobs are easily found in the West, I guess,” said Effie. “My 


26 


SHODDY 


cousins in Kansas say in their letters that things are awful 
cheap out there, but everybody seems to be busy. Why, they 
even burned corn, instead of wood, in their stoves last winter. 
Somebody had to cut it and husk it, though.” 

“There’s another reason why I don’t go,” said Bartelmy. 
“How can I get enough money to go out West, on eight dollars 
a month?” 

As Effie had no answer to that question, she turned the talk 
into an easier channel. 

Bartelmy ventered to consult with his mother on his next 
Sunday at home. She shrank from the thought, but her heart 
leaped a little to know that he was even considering such a 
venture. Her first born was no great mystery to her. She 
knew that, like his father, he loved security, which to her was 
no unalloyed good. If this America was beginning to suggest 
other things to him, she would help and not hinder. 

“If you really want to go,” she told him, “your father and I 
will try to find a way. You’ve grown a lot since you went to 
the farm, and you’re strong for your seventeen years. I know 
naught of this West you talk about, but happen you would do 
well there.” 

And Hannah Bonafede that night put away five dollars of 
the six Bartelmy had given her. It was not the first time she 
had hoarded some of his wages, and now there was a matter of 
seventeen dollars in the queer little tea-caddy she used as a 
bank. 

A month later she sent Bartelmy a post card. “I think there 
may be a chance for you to go out West,” she wrote; “come in 
the first Sunday you can, and we’ll talk about it.” 

Bartelmy asked for the next Sunday off, and got it. Then 
he said, “I’ve been thinking of going out West, Mr. Van Tas¬ 
sel.” 

“You have, hey? Not going right away, are you?” 

“Oh, no; I don’t know when; and maybe I shan’t go. I’ve 
just been thinking about it.” 

“You’ve been thinking about something this long while,” 
said Mr. Van Tassel. “Seems’ if you can’t think and work at 
the same time, either, I’ve noticed. Let’s be getting home”; 
and he gave Bartelmy the lines, while he himself opened up 
yesterday’s New York Sun, regularly passed on to him, a day 
old, by a Tarrytown customer. 


SHODDY 


27 


For a few days after that rebuke Bartelmy was worth far 
more than he cost, and the farmer knew it better than Bartelmy 
could. Then came Sunday, and the trip to Nepperhan after 
the morning chores were done. 

Mrs. Bonafede’s church work had brought her into various 
contact with local charities, and a chance reference to her boy’s 
supposed longing for the West had reached the ears of a wom¬ 
an whose range of interests was wider than her own. It was 
this woman who had given Mrs. Bonafede the idea that had 
prompted the post card. 

“In New York”, Hannah explained to her son, “there’s a 
great charity called the Children’s Aid Society. It takes or¬ 
phans and other homeless children to the West and finds homes 
for them. Mrs. Blatchford says that a big boy always goes 
with each party of little boys, to help the society’s agent in 
caring for them on the trip. They try to find some boy who 
wants to go out West, and the society gives him half his rail¬ 
way fare for his work with the little boys.” 

“Half?” said Bartelmy. “But half isn’t any good. The 
ticket would cost thirty or forty dollars, perhaps more; and 
where can I get half of that?” 

Whereupon Hannah Bonafede, though afterwards she cried 
about it much in private, proudly told him, “I’ve been saving 
a bit now and then out of the wages you’ve given me. It’s 
your money. I’ve nearly twenty dollars in the tea-caddy.” 

Bartelmy went weak in the legs. Adventure was actually 
calling, but it meant adventure into the unknown, and, after 
all, the unknown had more menace than charm for him. 

“I should have to tell Mr. Van Tassel,” he said inanely even 
for him. 

“Yes, my lad, and you’d have to do some other things. But 
it’s only a chance, yet. I’ll find out when the next party is go¬ 
ing, and then you can apply for the job of helping with the 
little boys.” 

So he went back to the farm, Father Luke walking with him 
to the station, smoking, and saying little, as usual. 

Effie was down on Monday with the milk. Eagerly she 
questioned Bartelmy about the plan his mother had, for of 
course he had shown her the post card. 

“Of course you’re going,” she said. “That is, if you can get 
the job with the boys.” 


28 


SHODDY 


“But I don’t know anybody in the West,” said Bartelmy. 
“It would be frightfully strange, you know.” 

“You know!” mocked scornful Effie. “Why can’t you be 
American? And what if it is strange! Isn’t it the West? Oh, 
Bartelmy, I’ll tell you what! You know about my cousins, 
who live in Kansas? Why can’t you plan to go to their place? 
And they’d be sure to know where you could get work. Even 
if you had to hunt a while, living’s cheap in Kansas, and I’m 
sure my cousins would be awfully pleased to have visitors. 
Probably they don’t get many.” 

“But they don’t know me,” Bartelmy objected. “Why 
should they let me visit them?” 

“Stupid! Wouldn’t you be straight from their folks here, 
and wouldn’t they want to know all about how we are and what 
we are doing? Why, you’d be almost as welcome as we would. 
Anyway, I’m going to write them a letter and tell them all about 
it. Then if you go they’ll be expecting you.” 

Bartelmy, who never refused help of any sort, saw no reason 
for protesting against the letter, which Effie wrote that same 
night, while the mood was on her. 

The next week came another post card from home. His 
mother wrote: “A Children’s Aid party is going to Missouri 
early in January. You will have to go to New York to apply 
for the job of helper, but I can get some letters from people 
here. I hope you can spend Christmas with us.” 

And so one mid-December day he said goodbye to. the Van 
Tassels, and Effie drove him and the little tin box containing 
all his worldly goods to the station. 

“Now, don’t you forget about going to Kansas,” she en¬ 
joined. “It is the next state to Missouri, so it can’t be much 
out of your way. Here’s a letter to my uncle. I don’t think 
you’ll need it. And you mustn’t be surprised if I turn up out 
there myself before long.” 

With their carefully matter-of-fact farewells over, and with 
the train vanished around the curve, Effie took stock of her 
feelings. “I don’t know why I should bother so about that boy. 
He certainly does have to be shoved along. If only something 
could happen to him when he gets out there!” 


SHODDY 


29 


VIII 

Behold Bartelmy Bonafede, then, one slushy January day 
in the early eighties, standing cold and forlorn and wholly 
miserable in the Erie ferry house at Twenty-third Street, New 
York. The equipment for his Western expedition included one 
small roped trunk, containing almost everything he owned in 
the world, and one round tin box with a handle, containing all 
the rest except what was on his person. And that might easily 
be inventoried. To-wit: A much-worn gray suit, a second¬ 
hand overcoat, a checked shirt, thin underwear, home-knitted 
stockings, rubber boots to which an inventive Nepperhan cob¬ 
bler had affixed leather soles, a celluloid collar, a made tie 
fastened to the collar button by a bit of elastic, and knitted 
mittens for his chapped hands. 

His ticket read to “Odessa, Kansas.” The man at the Chil¬ 
dren’s Aid Society had asked him if he had any special place 
in mind out West. The only place whose name he knew was 
the place near where Effie had said her relatives lived, so he 
named it. 

The clerk said, “Well, our party leaves the main line of the 
Missouri Pacific just this side of Kansas City, but if Mr. Walk¬ 
er is willing to go the rest of the way alone you can travel 
straight on to Odessa.” 

By nightfall the party was settled in an ancient Erie coach, 
rumbling out through Northern New Jersey. Mr. Walker and 
Bartelmy fed the twenty-five hungry little lads who consti¬ 
tuted the “shipment.” It was a simple enough meal—milk and 
doughnuts and an apple apiece. Bartelmy had his own provi¬ 
sions—Hannah Bonafede’s parting gift to her big boy. She 
had put a lot of love into that pasteboard box, together with 
the currant cake and the marmalade sandwiches and the hard 
boiled eggs. Perhaps that was why the food held out so well. 
There was still one good meal left in it—pretty dry—when the 
long journey ended. 

On the third morning the little boys’ canvas beds were folded 
up for the last time, and soon after breakfast Bartelmy and 
the others separated. The Children’s Aid group turned south¬ 
west at Pleasant Hill on the way to Nevada and Pittsburg; 
he kept on to Kansas City. 

On the train, once out of Pleasant Hill, he had moments of 


30 


SHODDY 


something very like panic. He was alone; much more than a 
thousand miles from anybody who knew or cared for him, and 
his destination no more than a name to him. 

At Kansas City he had a two-hour wait, and in the late 
afternoon the train stopped at the junction which marked 
Bartelmy’s last change of cars. Here he was to take a branch 
line for the final twenty miles of his journey. 

An engine stood on the other track beyond the depot, and 
Bartelmy looked for the coaches. None were in sight. As the 
agent came back from picking up the mail thrown off the now- 
vanishing westbound train, Bartelmy, identifying him only by 
his peaked cap, since otherwise he was garbed in clothes of the 
same nondescript shapelessness as all the other men in sight, 
accosted him. 

“What time does the train leave for Odessa?” 

“Don’t ask me, young feller,” said the agent, not so brusque*- 
ly as he sounded. “The train is stuck in the snow five miles out, 
and nobody knows when she’ll get here. Not tonight, that’s 
sure. And she can’t leave till she arrives. There ain’t but 
one.” He laughed at his own feeble jest. 

The boy had kept up fairly well, so far. But this had not 
been even in his vaguely considered scheme of things. If he 
had won through to Odessa, at least there was somebody there 
whose name he knew, and who also knew his name, since Effie 
Bailey had written about him. 

But here at the Junction—why, he had no one, and nothing. 
He sat down in the grimy waiting room, as near to the red- 
hot cannon stove as he dared, and took account of stock. 

First, he had his lunch box, now almost empty and altogether 
uninviting. It was food no more. 

Second, he had a few pennies in his pocket. And one trade 
dollar. 

The agent, replenishing the volcanic stove, noticed his anx¬ 
iety. “What’s the trouble, son?” he asked. “Are you busted?” 

“Not quite,” said Bartelmy, “but I will be before I get to 
Odessa, unless the train comes soon.” 

“Well, it won’t come tonight, that’s flat. You may as well 
settle down until morning.” 

“Where can I go?” Bartelmy wanted to know. 

“There’s a sort of a hotel across there,” and the agent 
pointed to a house which Bartelmy disliked at sight. “You 


SHODDY 


31 


can get meals for a quarter apiece, and a bed at the same 
price.” 

Bartelmy’s dollar, then, was good for three meals and a 
night’s lodging. But he thought best to husband his resources. 
So he ate once more from the box his mother had packed. Then 
he deliberately threw the rest of his three-days-old lunch away. 
He took his tin box across to the ugly house, and asked for a 
bed. By this time it was dark, so very soon he turned in. It 
was the easiest way of passing the time. 

Breakfast was warm; plenty, if coarse, and highly satisfying 
to his uncritical appetite, and he even felt better in his mind 
for it. The agent looked in and said, “That train will be 
through the drifts by ten o’clock, and she’ll start right back.” 

Thus Bartelmy Bonafede came, at midday, to Odessa, 
county seat of Fairfield County, only to learn that the Fair¬ 
childs lived six miles out, on Wolf Creek. His informant, a 
young fellow at the depot, told him the shortest road was 
straight across Paint Creek and up the Warren ravine out on to 
the divide, and then straight east to Wolf Creek; but there was 
a better way, since the big snow, by going two miles up the 
track and crossing Paint Creek at Johnson’s place. 

Heartsick, hungry, but loath to part with the half-dollar left 
from his hotel bill, Bartelmy did not know what to do. And 
so, just to be doing something, desperately eager to get where 
he could find some sort of relief from his sense of utter isola¬ 
tion, he first made sure that his little trunk was in the baggage 
room, and then with his tin box set off up the track for the 
Johnson ford. He had been told just where to turn off from 
the track, and he watched for the indicated landmarks. 

One of these was near to proving his undoing. “When 
you’ve crossed the long trestle, it’s the next road; turn east, to 
the creek. It’s frozen, and you can cross easily,” were his in¬ 
structions. But he hadn’t been told how to cross the trestle. 

What did he know of trestles? After nearly an hour’s walk¬ 
ing, for he made slow progress, here it was—a hundred feet of 
wooden bridge without superstructure, spanning a deep, 
straight-sided gully. There was no way to cross save by step¬ 
ping from tie to tie, easy enough to the initiate, but pure tor¬ 
ture to Bartelmy, even if there had been no snow and ice to 
make this footing uncertain. 

He crossed, somehow. Four or five times he stopped, set 


32 


SHODDY 


down his tin box and knelt in abject terror on the snow-crusted 
ties. One fear was spared him; the train had gone on, and he 
had learned yesterday that it was the only train the branch 
line could boast. So he did not need to worry about being 
trapped. And, at long last, sweating in spite of the cold and 
his none too heavy clothing, he found himself clean across. 
Just ahead must be the road to Johnson’s ford; he stepped over 
the cattle-guard and turned eastward towards the timber which 
marked the course of Paint Creek. 

Five minutes later the Middleton dogs saw him, and gave 
tongue. 


CHAPTER III 


I 

Kansas, when the last third of the nineteenth century be¬ 
gan, was getting itself ready to be the experiment station of 
American democracy. 

For twelve or fifteen years the Kansas scene had been per¬ 
sistently turbulent. John Brown had come, and had left his 
mark on the state forever, before he set out for the gallows and 
glory by way of Harpers Ferry. Quantrell’s guerrillas had 
sacked Lawrence. Kansas had been admitted to the Union as 
a free state. The Santa Fe Trail was luring its thousands 
further into the Golden West. The Central Pacific Railroad 
was stretching out towards the Rockies and beyond, to meet 
the line working eastward from California. Young veterans of 
the Civil War—the “Rebellion,” they called it—were taking 
up homesteads or buying land from the Indians at anything 
from ten dollars an acre down to one or less. A few church 
schools, with unreasonably prophetic optimism calling them¬ 
selves universities, were struggling to keep their starved pro¬ 
fessors and their crudely ambitious students together. 

Henry Ward Beecher and other like-minded lovers of liberty 
were sending practical aid to the colonies they had helped to 
outfit and establish. Germans of the ’48 were coming in, many 
of them by way of New Orleans and St. Louis. They had 
followed the lead of Carl Schurz, though he had established 
himself in Missouri, while they pushed on into Kansas. 

Peter Middleton was six years old in grasshopper year. The 
farm where the grasshoppers had undone in a week the work 
of toilsome years was a quarter-section which straddled Paint 
Creek, in Kinne County. Here Heinrich Mittelstadt became 
“Henry Middleton” to all the county, which already knew him 
for his strong and all-including honesty, and here he dug him¬ 
self in. He built one of these square, solid, unimaginative and 
uncomfortable limestone houses of the place and period. 

Mother Middleton had slight time or inclination for interest 


33 


34 


SHODDY 


outside her family, her house and its immediate setting. She 
had been an unsuccessful Yankee schoolma’am when Heinrich 
Mittelstadt had met and married her. They understood each 
other perfectly. 

The boys did the milking. They fed the hogs. They 
chopped the firewood. They were beginning to do the farm 
work, led by Jim Oliver from Tennessee, a shrewd and com¬ 
petent black man who had come to Kansas in the Exodus. 
Father Middleton planned the work, but he was aging before 
his time, and by the middle eighties was almost past active 
labor himself. He spent his days in reading, widely and 
with discrimination. He kept much to the house, coatless and 
slippered, forever smoking his old German pipe. But nothing 
escaped him. He was one of those young men who had come 
out of Germany in the days following the uprising of ’48, 
bringing with him both a fierce spirit of independence and a 
prideful atheism. 

You would not have thought him German. In the early 
part of his career in America he had been associated with a 
few Americans, men who had brought a persistent intellec- 
tualism to the West with them. Being in those days highly 
impressionable, and young enough to change, he had taken 
on almost the accent and entirely the vocabulary of his first 
American intimates. 


ii 

In the early afternoon of the day when Bartelmy set out 
from Odessa, Father Middleton had been talking to Jim Oliver 
about the fodder supply. The stack yard had not hay enough 
to last until the steers could be turned out on to the range. 
So it was decided to begin feeding out of the north forty, and 
go easy on the hay. Jim and Peter Middleton hitched a 
team to the hayrack, and took a couple of axes, for the shocks 
were frozen into the drifted snow around them, and must be 
chopped out. Father Middleton went back to his Um die Welt 
and the St. Louis Post Dispatch. The two smaller Middleton 
boys were at school; Mother Middleton, in the workroom back 
of the kitchen, busied herself with mysterious rites touching 
the stock of head cheese and coffee cake. And into this routine 
of a Kansas farm’s winter day came Bartelmy Bonafede. 


SHODDY 


35 


Bartelmy had stopped, irresolutely, where a narrower road 
branched off at right angles from the plain way to the creek. 
It was only a sort of lane, and yet it showed evidence of much 
more use than the creek road. He had no real idea of the 
distance he had yet to cover. Here were signs of traffic, and 
therefore of people. So he turned into the lane. 

At the same moment Jim Oliver and Peter Middleton were 
driving into the yard from the north, with a hayrack load 
of stalks for the afternoon feeding in the timber along the 
creek. If they had come three minutes earlier, the wagon 
would have met Bartelmy on the open road, with the slightest 
exchange of greetings as they passed, for the dogs would have 
been less demonstrative. They knew the bounds of the farm. 
As it was, they saw Bartelmy first, and dashed off to attack 
the intruder. Then Peter caught sight of him, and was down 
from the wagon in one jump. You never knew what those dogs 
might do. 

He shouted to the deep-voiced Tige and the yelping Hector; 
and he shouted also to the figure down the lane, “Don’t run. 
Stand where you are. You Tige; you Heck! Come here!” 

When Bartelmy heard the dogs, his heart pounded with 
surprise and fright. He had always feared dogs. Most earnest¬ 
ly did he want to run. But Peter’s shout checked that 
desire, and he stood his ground. The dogs paused, to see what 
he would do, and in that moment Peter rushed up. 

“They won’t touch you now,” said Peter, who saw that the 
stranger’s fears were subsiding but slowly. 

“Thank you,” Bartelmy responded, with uncertain hold on 
his voice, “I’m not very sure about strange dogs. I was coming 
to the house to ask my way. You can tell me, perhaps, 
whether I’m anywhere near the right road to a Mr. Fairchild’s? 
They said at Odessa I should have to go east to the creek, but 
this road seemed to be much more used.” 

“It is,” Peter assented, “because we do a good deal of 
hauling. But it ends here. To get to Fairchild’s, you go 
straight on to the creek, past where you turned into our lane.” 

All the time Peter was inspecting the other boy. He saw 
a slender youth of something under his own age, but evidently 
a stranger, and not a stranger to Paint Creek merely. This 
boy must have come a long way. 

So he said, “If you’re not sure of the road I wouldn’t try 


36 


SHODDY 


for Fairchild’s tonight if I were you. It’s going to be dark 
long before you can get there, and with this snow, you could 
easy get lost on the other side of the divide.” He wondered, 
without saying so, why anybody should want to get to Fair¬ 
child’s, anyhow. 

“But I must,” Bartelmy protested, though weakly. “I 
don’t know anybody else in this country.” 

“Are you visiting them, then?” Peter asked, with a little 
less interest. Maybe this stranger was a Fairchild himself, 
and, if so, to be dealt with cautiously. 

Bartelmy hesitated. His excuse for this journey had seemed 
to him slimmer and more fantastic every hour since yester¬ 
day. How much less sensible must it appear to this matter- 
of-fact chap, who naturally couldn’t appreciate its original 
urge. 

“Yes,” he said at last, “I’m visiting them, in a way. At 
least, I’ve never seen them, but I have a letter to Mr. Fair- 
child from a friend in the East who is related to him.” 

“No Fairchild, then,” thought Peter, and his interest re¬ 
vived, while curiosity made him more than hospitable. Boys 
from the East did not come up the lane every day. 

“I’ll tell you what,” he said eagerly, “come on in to the 
house and meet the folks. They’ll be glad to have you stay 
here tonight. There’s an extra cot in our room.” 

Peter saw that his invitation was not spurned, and so took 
consent for granted. He answered Jim’s impatient hail with 
fine unconcern. “I’m going into the house with this boy,” he 
said. “You drive on down to the timber and I’ll cut across 
the clover field to meet you.” 

Mrs. Middleton did not fail her son; food and shelter could 
not be denied a wayfarer, and Peter’s prompt adoption of the 
strange boy as his own guest helped Bartelmy over his first 
embarrassment. He could see that Peter’s mother was used 
to boys. 

When Bartelmy had put his overcoat and his little bundle 
on the cot in Peter’s room, Peter took him to Father Middle- 
ton. This was the final ordeal. 

“Dad,” he said, “this is a boy who’s going over to Fairchild’s 
on Wolf Creek. He’s no kin to them, though. I want him to 
stay here tonight, Mother says he can.” 

“What’s his name?” asked Father Middleton. Peter hadn’t 


SHODDY 


37 


asked that, so Bartelmy gave it; and added, “My home is 
in a place called Nepperhan, on the Hudson River near New 
York.” 

And Father Middleton said, “All right. Take good care 
of him, Peter. He’s your guest.” 

At supper Bartelmy met the two younger boys, Oscar and 
Fred. Also he met the pride of the family, Margaretha, who 
had spent one year at Standish College after her high school 
career, which had been crowned with the salutatorian’s glory 
at Commencement. For some reason she was home from 
Standish for a few days. 

In the morning, Bartelmy helped Pater with the milking, 
and showed himself the better milker. Dairy-farm experience 
told as against the cruder methods of the West. He spent 
ten minutes making a milking stool; the first ever seen on 
the Middleton place. Peter enjoyed his new friend’s proof 
of skill and said, “How’d you like to stay here, instead of 
going on to Fairchild’s? There isn’t much fun with them— 
just the two of them, and no near neighbors.” 

To Bartelmy the invitation was a most welcome word. Of 
course Peter was only a boy, and his father might have dif¬ 
ferent views. So he said to Peter, “I’d like to. You know 
the Fairchilds don’t mean anything to me. A girl I knew in 
the East told me about them, and she said she would write 
to them and tell them I was coming West. I just stopped at 
Odessa because they were the only people out here that I’d 
ever heard about. But there’s no hurry, and if I could get 
work here I’d like it.” 

Peter said, “Let’s go see Father. He may keep you.” 

Father Middleton did not warm to the idea. He asked 
questions until he discovered that Bartelmy’s only farm ex¬ 
perience had been on a few acres of stony eastern soil. 

“You’re not strong enough to run the lister,” he said. “And 
you’ve never driven a cultivator; hoed corn by hand, I sup¬ 
pose. Nice job that would be on our fifty-acre corn fields. 
You don’t know range cattle, of course. Can you ride?” 

Bartelmy couldn’t, and didn’t dare say yes. 

“There’s all sorts of riding on this place, and the horses are 
not like your Eastern horses.” 

As the farmer talked Bartelmy began to understand that 
farming on Paint Creek meant, according to the season, such 


38 


SHODDY 


things as running a lister, driving a reaper, pitching wheat 
to the stackers, riding range, feeding the cattle in the timber 
along the creek, watching out for buckeye in the early spring, 
breaking colts, running a drill, and a dozen other operations 
he hadn’t so much as heard of. Vague memories of the Santa 
Fe land booklets were the best knowledge he could muster. 

“But, Father,” Peter broke in at length, “he can milk better 
than I can, or Jim. And he showed me how to make this 
milking stool,” which he held as he stood by Bartelmy at the 
edge of the porch. 

Henry Middleton looked down at the boys over his long 
pipe. 

“I guess Peter wants you more than I do,” said Mr. Middle- 
ton. “What wages were you getting back East?” 

“Eight dollars a month, sir.” 

“Eight dollars? Is that all? Well, it’s a fact there’s work 
enough around here, and Peter seems to like you. So I guess 
we can pay you that. Stay with us until spring opens anyway. 
Then we’ll see.” 


hi 

So simply it was that he became the Middleton hired boy. 
And thus, with none to warn Bartelmy of all it would mean, 
were set in motion forces and influences which were not to 
stop until they had made him a Methodist bishop. And not 
then. 

The farmhouse dining room served after supper as living 
room for everybody save Father and Mother Middleton. Even 
Miss Hamilton, the teacher of District 44, and Margaretha, 
when she was at home, were not above it, though Jim Oliver 
and the boys displayed too little interest in the niceties of 
deportment to suit Retha’s college-formed taste. 

Said Retha one early spring night at supper, “There’s a 
visitor from the East at Fairchild’s—a girl.” 

Bartelmy’s knife dropped to the floor. Of course, the girl 
was Effie. But he waited until Peter asked, carelessly, “What’s 
her name? And where’s she from?” 

“Lizzie Albright met Mrs. Fairchild and the girl in the store 
at Fairdale this afternoon; her name’s Bailey, I think she 
said.” 


SHODDY 


39 


“That must be Effie Bailey,” said Bartelmy at last, “the girl 
I knew back East.” And he wondered what the Fairchild’s 
had told her about his failure to present himself at their home, 
in accordance with Effie’s letter. 

“You did? And never told us? Tell us now; all about her,” 
Retha demanded. 

“I’ll bet she’s your girl,” said Jim Oliver. 

Bartelmy laughed uneasily. “Not that exactly; but she’s 
all right. She knows her way about, Effie does. You’ll all 
like her. She’s come out here to teach, I suppose.” 

The friends met, inevitably, at singing school. Effie came 
with Lizzie Albright, since the north line of the Albrights’ was 
the south line of the Fairchild’s. 

What had been told her Bartelmy did not know, and he 
was not anxious to find out. But he was sure she would lose 
no time in asking him for the facts. Effie Bailey was like 
that. 

And so, while they greeted each other warmly, Effie saying, 
“You see, I’ve done just what I said I should,” and Bartelmy 
asking, Paint Creek fashion, “What do you think of the 
West, so far?” he was casting about for an explanation which 
would be as near the truth as possible without offending her. 

During the recess he busied himself in an effort to separate 
Effie from the young people of the Albright neighborhood. 
And then he suddenly found that there was no need of 
explanation. 

“O, Bart,” Effie said when they were for a moment by 
themselves, “they’ve told me about you at Uncle Fairchild’s, 
how you must be too proud to visit them, and all that. But 
they are so queer; not a bit as I expected to find them. I 
don’t blame you for not going.” 

“That’s what Peter hinted,” admitted Bart. “And I was a 
stranger to them, so they would have no reason for being any¬ 
thing but queer to me. Peter hasn’t said much, but I know he 
thinks they are close-fisted, and always trying to get the best 
of everybody. Other folks talk the same way. So I didn’t go.” 

“I’m not surprised,” said Effie. “They are stingy and sour; 
and they live like poor folks, though they’ve got a good farm 
and lots of stock. I shan’t stay a day longer than I can help.” 

“Do you mean you’ll go back East?” Bartelmy asked, his 


40 


SHODDY 


relief at his own release from apprehension tempered by her 
evident distress and the possibility of her leaving. 

“No, indeed. Daddy had a chance to sell his place, all of 
a sudden, and he’s gone to work at the Tarrytown boatyard. 
So I’m not needed at home.” 

“And you really mean to stay out here?” the boy demanded; 
“you’ve come West for good?” 

“Of course, silly. Didn’t I tell you last summer I would 
come if I ever got the chance? Well, I’m here.” 

“You still think you’ll be a teacher? Will you have to get 
more schooling?” Bartelmy could not help showing the be¬ 
wilderment he felt. Here was a girl who had come out from 
the East with no more prospects than his own, but her spirit 
seemed to welcome the adventure, while his— 

“Certainly I shall teach,” Effie declared. “And I don’t need 
much more schooling to make a start. I’ve been pumping 
Lizzie Albright about the school systems out here, and she says 
I can get a certificate easily, if I attend the Institute at Odessa 
this summer. About all I need extra is to read up on one or 
two of the special Kansas textbooks.” 

“But you’ll be living at the Fairchilds all spring, then?” 
Bartelmy asked dejectedly, feeling that Effie might as well 
have stayed in Westchester County, for any pleasure he was 
likely to get out of her society. 

“But I won’t,” Effie said scornfully. “I’ve got enough of 
them already. They may be my kinfolks, but they’re not the 
sort of people I expected to find out west, and they’re not 
the sort I’m used to, either. So, it’s about settled that I’m to 
stay at Albright’s. I can work, you know.” 

Whereupon Bartelmy felt better, and, hailing Peter Middle- 
ton, tried out the queer local formula which he had first heard 
only a few weeks before; “Miss Bailey, I’d like to make you 
acquainted with my friend, Peter Middleton.” 

And Peter said, also in strict conformity to the conventions, 
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Bailey.” 

IV 

In Fairdale’s little Methodist church, services were held 
every other Sunday night, the church being part of the Walnut 
Hill circuit, whose pastor had one other out-appointment in 


SHODDY 


41 


addition to the “head of the circuit,” the sprawling ranch town 
of Walnut Hill. 

What proved to be the last of the cold weather was on when 
Brother Fenwick announced a protracted meeting at Fairdale, 
and all the country side came out to the services. 

You couldn’t say they came entirely from religious interest. 
Much of it was that, as it has always been. But some people 
came for the social values of the meeting. They had always 
taken their neighborhood fellowship mixed with religion, and 
had no thought of anything different. Some came out of sheer 
gregariousness. Fairdale and its surrounding farms had few 
distractions, and, unless one had unusual resources in himself, 
life could be unbearably drab to those whose circumstances 
left them any leisure at all. 

The revival proved more resultful than anybody had ex¬ 
pected. It is not certain what helped young Fenwick to suc¬ 
ceed where others had failed, but the steady attendance of the 
young people from the Middleton and Albright farms had 
something to do with it. Effie and Bartelmy, known as church 
members at the outset, and therefore drawn into the little band 
of helpers, found themselves forced by social pressure to “do 
personal work.” 

Before the end of the first week, conversions began to occur. 
Bartelmy remembered enough of the methods used by the 
“Primitives” in Thornlea to make himself useful without deal¬ 
ing directly with the kneeling penitents at the mourners’ bench. 
Effie, lacking his familiarity with revival routine, brought to 
the work a sober sincerity which was far more effective than 
it seemed. She could not be effusive, but she could talk to 
young people in their own speech, and she brought down to 
earth and literalness much of Brother Fenwick’s high-flown 
and second-hand evangelistic appeal. 

Bartelmy met no serious difficulties until he attempted to 
talk to Peter. He had held off two or three nights, restrained 
by an embarrassment he did not even try to define. At last, 
urged on by Fenwick, who guessed something of what stuff 
was in Peter, he made the venture. 

And Peter confounded him, utterly and finally! He asked 
simple questions which Bartelmy could not answer save with 
formal, stereotyped phrases. Peter pointed out flaws in his 
reasoning. Without intending it, he made Bartelmy realize that 


42 


SHODDY 


he was repeating formulas, artificial and mechanical. Peter 
admitted he would like to know more about being a Christian, 
but he could not follow his friend’s lead in traversing the suc¬ 
cessive zones on the way to conversion. 

And then, when it seemed no one could break through to 
Peter’s real difficulty, Effie Bailey managed it, or he managed 
it himself as much as was necessary, with her to help. 

She and Peter had become great friends, with no nonsense 
about their friendship, as she liked to say. To him she was 
a constant, secret delight. In every commonplace incident 
where she was involved, he had learned to expect always a 
touch of insight, some discerning and practical word. 

Peter took her home one night, in his own new buggy, 
bought with the proceeds of a six months’ experiment in hogs 
which his father had permitted and even guided. They talked 
about the night’s meeting and its incidents. 

“That song they sang tonight,” said Peter, “is one I never 
heard before.” 

“Which one?” Effie asked. 

“The one with the queer chorus, T will arise and go to 
Jesus.’ The chorus didn’t seem to belong to the other words, 
and the tune was too much for me.” 

“Oh, yes.” Effie recalled the song. “I never heard it before, 
either. It sounds like a home-made tune, if there is such a 
thing. I heard the Jubilee singers once, and it reminds me of 
some of their ‘spirituals’.” 

Peter had meant to lead up to a question. So he began 
again. “There’s a good deal said in these meetings that I don’t 
get on to. You know my father doesn’t believe in religion,— 
any religion. I think he’s mistaken, myself. But of course he’s 
influenced me. Now, you’re a Christian. Can you give me 
any idea of what it means to ‘go to Jesus’? Don’t tell me what 
the preacher means by it, or the church. Bartelmy says he’s 
told me that, and I can’t see it. But it must mean something, 
and surely you know what it is.” 

Effie kept silence for a little. She would not have said she 
was praying, but she was. 

Then she spoke, with many hesitations. “You know a good 
deal about Jesus, of course? Well, I think when they say ‘go 
to Jesus,’ or ‘come to Jesus,’ what it means isn’t—just being 
sorry for having done wrong, or wanting to find some way of 


SHODDY 


43 


escaping punishment, or even ‘getting right with God.’ I think 
it means that we’ve got to have a leader, or we won’t get much 
out of life, and there just isn’t any other leader worth follow¬ 
ing but Jesus. You see—” 

“That’s all right,” Peter broke in, “there isn’t. I’ve seen 
that for a long time. But, Effie, they say so much about 
Jesus that I don’t get hold of at all. They say he is God, 
and yet man. They call him the Son of God and put him 
far away. Do I have to believe everything they say about 
him before I can take him for my leader? I know as well 
as anybody that I want some sort of center for my life, and 
if it could be a person such as I think Jesus was, all the 
better. But they tell me to believe so much more than I 
can take in.” 

“I know,” said Effie; “and I wonder if anybody can take 
it all in. I know I can’t begin to. I just feel that Jesus is 
more than the best any of us know, and, if he is alive now, 
in some such way as he said he would be, do you think there 
could be anything more wonderful in our life than to risk 
everything on taking him for granted in our lives? I mean 
like the old knights took their king, or like Garibaldi’s men 
took Garibaldi, only with the world of difference there is 
between Christ and any other hero.” 

“Yes,” said Peter, “that’s the only place where I think I 
could get hold of religion. Just taking Jesus for granted, 
especially if in some strange way he really is more than the 
carpenter who was crucified in Palestine so long ago.” 

“But, Peter,” Effie suggested, with a brave little trembling 
in her voice, “taking Jesus for granted isn’t so easy. He is 
a fact, of course. And I believe he is more than the crucified 
carpenter. But if he is, he is the greatest fact in the world. 
Taking him for granted ought to mean taking him as Master 
—in earnest, don’t you think?” 

“In earnest? Maybe you mean that a fellow’s got to put 
all he has into it, and take all the chances on what he gets 
out of it?” Peter asked, with a premonition of discovery in 
his question. 

“Yes; I think that must be it,” said Effie; and Peter said, 
“I know it is. I’ve known it all along, but I didn’t see it, 
I mean. You’re exactly right. And, Effie,—” for the moment 
he forgot everything else about Effie except that he wanted her 


44 


SHODDY 


to be the first to hear him say it,—“Effie, that’s just what I’m 
going to do, from now on.” 

“But that’s conversion,” Effie said in a whisper that seemed 
to her as though she had shouted her joy. 

“Is it? It isn’t what Bart means by conversion, I guess. 
Maybe not what Brother Fenwick means. I don’t really know 
what Jesus was—or is. But, whatever this is, you’ve shown 
me a peep into myself. Do you suppose it is what they mean 
by saying ‘I will arise and go to Jesus’?” 

“What else in the world could it be?” 

“And I’m converted, then?” 

“Yes, if you’re sorry for your sins and want Jesus for your 
Saviour from sin. That’s the promise in the Bible, you know.” 

“I’m sorry and ashamed enough for all the cheap and rotten 
things I’ve ever done wrong, if that’s it. It seems now so 
horribly disloyal to what he stood for—stands for. And as 
for wanting Jesus for my Saviour, I can’t say. I’d like to take 
him every way I know, that’s all.” 

“And will you say this in the meeting?” 

“Why not? Or anywhere else? The hardest thing will be 
to say it to dad, I guess. But I almost think he’ll understand. 
He’s kept so close to his ideals all these years.” 

As he spoke, they were turning in at the Albright gate, and 
Effie had just time to say, “I hope he will not only understand, 
but be proud. If he isn’t—” 

“Let’s not think of that. I don’t want to think of anything 
yet, except how you’ve helped me tonight. I’ll never forget it.” 

“I don’t think I shall, either,” said Effie, in a voice she tried 
vainly to steady. And Peter, with a new estimate of this girl 
from the East, pretended not to notice that she trembled as 
he helped her from the buggy. 

As he drove the rest of the way home, Peter tried to pull 
himself together. With his sudden, if poorly defined, discovery 
of a Leader, there was coming another discovery,—he needed 
a scheme of things in his life. Maybe it would be to make of 
himself the best farmer he could, for he knew that in time 
the home place would almost certainly come to him. But it 
might be something else. And he would never know what it 
really was unless he got where he could make a beginning of 
fitting himself for it. Not for the first time or the fiftieth, 
but now with a new directness, he thought of college. High 


SHODDY 


45 


school had hardly seemed enough, even when he took practical 
facts into account. He had always wished he could see further 
into the world of men and books, of life and truth. At college 
he might even find something which would satisfy his new 
curiosity about Jesus of Nazareth. 

In the short two miles between Albrights’ and home, he 
found time to make a new decision. Of course, in the morning 
he would tell his father what had happened to him; and then 
he would propose college for next fall. Though times were 
not good, Peter knew there was money enough, if his father 
were willing. 


v 

The morning after a religious crisis is a time which can dis¬ 
count many of its meanings, if anything can do it. And Peter 
was dimly aware, as he followed Henry Middleton upstairs to 
his room after breakfast, that talking to Effie Bailey on the 
way home from meeting was considerably easier than explain¬ 
ing himself in the full light of day to the unsympathetic ration¬ 
alist who happened to be his father. 

Still, he got the story told, somehow. And then he waited, 
for in the other’s face he read a grim disapproval. Into the 
silence a cheap alarm clock on the bureau thrust its noisy 
ticking, with all a clock’s indifference to storm warnings. 

To Henry Middleton there was storm enough in this mo¬ 
ment. Here was something had caught him unawares. He had 
lived so long in the rightness of his opinions that the possibility 
of another view of life being held by any member of his family 
had not entered his head. He had taken for granted that all 
the Middletons accepted his views on religion. And now he 
realized that he should have done more, far more. He could 
have taught Peter much truth, if the need of teaching had ever 
occurred to him. Maybe it wasn’t too late yet; but now the 
method would need to be different. First, he must get this 
emotional foolishness out of the boy’s head. 

“I’m surprised at you, Peter,” he said. “I thought you knew 
better than to take this revival business seriously. You cer¬ 
tainly knew what I think about it.” 

“Yes, Father, I knew that. But you’ve never interfered, and 


46 


SHODDY 


I thought you wanted me to think things out for myself, just 
as you had done.” 

“I did. Though I’m not saying I should. You are too young 
to know what to believe. And I can’t have you carried away 
by a lot of canting nonsense. It’s all right for Jim; when he 
gets happy he works all the better for it, and the rest of the 
time he keeps that colored church in Odessa from getting too 
foolish. But you’ve got a mind. You can learn, and you must. 
First of all, you must learn to stay clear of superstition. Young 
as you are, you’re old enough to start looking into some of 
my books with me. What do you say?” 

Peter hadn’t much to say, except that though he would 
be glad to do some reading with his father, he meant to be a 
Christian, somehow, as fast as he could find out what being 
a Christian meant. 

“I know what it means,” said old Henry, angrily. “It means 
lazy preachers who don’t understand half of what they preach, 
and don’t believe the rest. It means churches always begging 
to be supported. It means sending badly-trained missionaries 
to all sorts of places where they’re not wanted, and where the 
people have religions older and more deeply rooted than Chris¬ 
tianity. It means being associated with hypocrites and weak- 
minded women. I’d hate to think of a son of mine being a 
Christian.” 

“But, Father, can’t it mean something else, something better 
than that? Can’t it mean having some of the same interest 
in all sorts of people that Jesus had; and living so as to be of 
use to them rather than just to get ahead?” 

“It might, but it doesn’t, that’s all. I have all respect for 
what Jesus was, and no respect at all for the churches that 
make so free with his name. They don’t stand for what he 
wanted; they are interested most of all in keeping themselves 
alive. Look at Odessa, with five churches, and with the name 
of being the toughest town in the county.” 

“All the same,” said Peter, “it doesn’t have to be like that, 
and I’d like to find out if it is as bad as it looks. If it is, 
all the more need for young folks who want to see the ideals 
of Jesus given a chance in the world.” 

“Does that mean you really intend to join the church?” 

“Why, yes, if the church’ll have me. And, Father, I want 


SHODDY 47 

a chance to make more of myself. I’ve been thinking maybe 
you’d be willing to let me go to college next fall.” 

Two emotions contended for mastery in Henry Middleton. 
To see a son of his preparing for such a life as he had longed 
for but had never been able to realize,—that was something 
which fitted perfectly into his desires. But to have Peter in 
college as a Christian, giving the lie to his father’s lifelong 
rejection of religion,—that revolted his pride. 

And he said, “I’ve no objection to college for you, as far as 
that goes. But if you go, you’ve got to go without any crazy 
ideas about religion. I want you to find out how little there 
is to it, and you can’t do that if you tie yourself up to the 
church to begin with. I’ll make you a proposition. Drop this 
talk about being a Christian, and you can start in at the State 
University next fall.” 

Peter had been so little exposed to instruction concerning 
any but the grossest forms of temptation that he did not 
think of this as a temptation at all. 

“You wouldn’t want me to do that, would you, Father? You 
stick to your own convictions too much to ask me to let go 
of mine.” 

“If they were convictions,” said Henry Middleton. “But 
convictions come slowly. How long have you been thinking 
about all this?” 

“Not very long, and I saw it with a little clearness only last 
night. But it’s just as real as if I’d known it always. If that 
is getting religion, I’m getting it.” 

“And you won’t drop something you have felt less than a 
day when I tell you that it is all based on superstition or tra¬ 
dition, which is much the same thing?” 

“I can’t, Father. For me it’s real, though I don’t know much 
about it yet. I’m going to know more. And I don’t want to 
go to the State University, at least not at first.” 

“Well, Peter,” said his father, who could be politic more 
easily than he could be affectionate, “you and I won’t quarrel. 
I’m too old, and you’re too young. But you’ll not expect me 
to encourage what I think is absolute foolishness. Look at 
these books,” and he pointed to his one crowded shelf of treas¬ 
ures; “if you’d read those, and try to understand them, you 
would understand me. But if you must go your own way, why 
you must go. You’ll soon be your own man, anyhow, and I 


48 SHODDY 

won’t interfere. But I haven’t a dollar for you if you go in 
for religion. That’s all.” 


VI 

And so it was. After that morning, neither Peter nor his 
father mentioned the subject again. There were days when 
the older man went to town, where he had an interest in a 
store, and a few shares in the bank. During these absences, 
Peter contrived once or twice to look over some of his father’s 
books. Those which were in German he could make little of. 
But there were several books in English,—these he read more 
carefully. They did not disturb him. Some were denunciations 
of conventional religion; some based themselves on Hume and 
Voltaire, and one was “The Age of Reason.” 

Peter’s religious interest had little relation to formal the¬ 
ology. He had been attracted by the man Jesus; to that 
strong and misunderstood life he turned in a growing hero- 
worship which made all argument against creeds and churches 
seem irrelevant and remote. 

Every now and then, as the two boys worked together, col¬ 
lege came up for discussion. Peter held to his purpose, and, 
without resentment on his part or open disapproval from his 
father, he made his preparations for Calder College. No other 
had been seriously considered. Brother Fenwick was a Calder 
student, and naturally had talked much of its advantages, 
which as colleges went, weren’t so great, if the truth must be 
told. 

The State University, besides being his father’s choice, 
which had stirred up a certain perverseness in Peter, was reck¬ 
oned more expensive than Calder. And Peter well knew he 
would have to provide his own funds. Besides, there was the 
religious aspect of education, necessarily omitted from the uni¬ 
versity program. 

The favor which Bartelmy had found in the eyes of Maude 
Hamilton, the teacher, produced in him a growing feeling that 
he was wasting his time in farm work. Miss Hamilton had 
questioned him about his schooling. To his surprise quite as 
much as hers, his Thornlea board-school training seemed to be 
valuable. 

Before the school term ended, she gave him a pretty fair out- 


SHODDY 


49 


line of what was required in a country school teacher. Where the 
work touched the subjects Thornlea had covered, he had noth¬ 
ing to fear. Of American history he was wholly innocent. He 
had small stock of formal grammar, and his book arithmetic 
had dealt much in pounds, shillings, and pence, and not at all 
in dollars and cents. He had a real love of reading, could spell 
any word he met if he were allowed to write it, and had a fair 
idea of geography, outside the United States. 

His summer wages stood at ten dollars a month. The least 
experienced teacher, even with no more than a third-grade cer¬ 
tificate, counted on getting thirty or thirty-five dollars. Board 
could be had in almost any farm home for eight dollars a month. 
When he thought of earning more than twice the pay, for six 
hours’ work five days a week, with no chores and no exposure 
to the weather, he felt sure that he was cut out for a teacher. 

Effie Bailey, of course, had been involved in his desire to 
change. She expected to get a school in the fall, and while he 
couldn’t hope to start even with her, it seemed to him she 
would think more of him if he were trying to make something 
of himself. 

Peter’s determination to go to Calder had its influence, too. 
As always, Bartelmy dreaded change; particularly he had no 
stomach for solitary adventure. And college , to an English 
working-class boy; could it be possible? If there were only 
some way for him to go with Peter. 

One Sunday afternoon they were riding home from salting 
the cattle, out on the range. As their horses slowed down to a 
walk through the timber east of Paint Creek, Bartelmy bluntly 
put the question. 

“Peter, how do you expect to get through Calder if your 
father sticks to his word?” For in the household Henry Mid¬ 
dleton’s terms were no secret. 

Peter laughed a little. “I’m not expecting it will be easy. 
I have a few dollars saved up, probably enough to last me a 
couple of months. By the time that’s gone some job or other 
will turn up. Brother Fenwick says plenty of the boys work 
their way.” 

“Do you think I could make it, too, Peter?” asked Bartelmy, 
to whom the question seemed far more crammed with meaning 
than it did to Peter. “And do you suppose they have classes 
that would give me the branches I’ve never had?” 


50 


SHODDY 


“Yes,” said Peter. “Yes to both of your questions. If other 
boys work, you can. And they must have classes in the prep¬ 
aratory department that would get you ready for the teachers’ 
examination.” 

Bartelmy’s eagerness betrayed him into a suggestion which 
six months earlier would have seemed the wildest of dreams. 
“What would you think, Peter, about us two going to school 
together? You’re ahead of me, but you’re going to work for 
your living, and so am I. We’d be company for one another. 
I don’t want to go to Normal School, or the Agricultural Col¬ 
lege; I should have to go there all by myself.” 

Peter laughed once more. “I knew that was on your mind 
all the time. Why not? Why not make Calder College richer 
by two ambitious young geniuses from Paint Creek?” 

Which was all the arrangement or agreement they needed; 
they came to the creek itself as Peter spoke, and their horses’ 
feet, splashing over its gravelly bed, stopped their talk just at 
the right time to make it seem final. 

Soon the plan was generally taken for granted. When most 
of the heavy work was out of the way, Peter was to go to Cal¬ 
der. Bartelmy, by efforts he himself could hardly explain, had 
not quite twenty-five dollars saved, and he wanted to add all of 
September’s earnings to his capital. So he would not get to 
Calder until the first of October. 

VII 

Peter and Effie had not seen much of each other during the 
later spring. He had been over at the Albright place several 
times, ostensibly on business with Carl Albright, but really to 
talk with Effie. And it had chanced each time that she was 
away. 

But Bartelmy had tried to feel that Effie and he were not a 
little interested in each other. Anyway it irked him as he saw 
that Peter sought her out. He had known Effie first. He liked 
her, he told himself. She had an effect on him. When he could 
talk things over with her, purposes grew clear, and ambitions 
began to stir within him. In many ways, he needed her. But 
if she began to think too much of Peter,— 

One day he enlarged to Peter on what friends Effie and he 
had been in the East. The story itself was not new to Peter. 


SHODDY 


51 


He remembered that when Bartelmy had come to the neighbor¬ 
hood he had a letter from Effie to the Fairchilds. But now 
Bartelmy saw an opportunity to embellish the affair with a 
touch of romance. 

“Of course, we were too young to think of anything serious, 
and we are yet, for that matter. But we understand each other 
pretty well. You know it was at her suggestion I came West. 
There wasn’t much chance if I stayed on the farm there, and I 
felt sure something would turn up if I could once get away 
from the Sawmill River country. We’ve got a long time to 
wait, even as it is, but anyway we have something to look for¬ 
ward to, and we’re going to get an education, just as you are. 
And then,—” 

Peter listened without comment. In the revival, Effie had 
done him a service which he could not forget. Not only did 
he intend to remember, but he would have liked to follow up 
the indications of interest which he felt he had in common with 
this girl from New York. He was as far as ever from being 
satisfied about the meanings and values of formal religion, but 
he had in nowise abated his expressed purpose “to take Jesus 
in every way I know.” 

This pledge, if it was a pledge, had been made to Effie, and 
to no other. The fact that she and he had shared such an ex¬ 
perience was a sort of secret bond. But he felt that Bartelmy, 
in hinting at the existence of another relationship, meant to 
suggest something in which his friend could have no part. The 
hint was far from pleasant. 

But he said nothing, except to ask, “Does Effie look at it 
the way you do?” 

And Bartelmy embellished the facts once more. “That’s 
why I’m telling you. You are a friend of us both, and you 
have a right to know.” 

That was all. The conversation turned to other matters. 
Evidently Bartelmy had been as definite as he meant to be, 
and Peter had no thought of prying. But he observed Effie a 
little more closely when they met, and it seemed as though he 
saw confirmation of what Bartelmy had said. She was friendly 
enough, but with no hint that she remembered the intimate 
confidences of the revival time. 

He did not know that Bartelmy had been talking to her, 
also, and on a like theme. 


52 


SHODDY 


They were strolling homeward from Sunday School, Bartel- 
my and the girl. Since Effie was walking, the day being fair, 
and the Albright place no great distance from the church, Bar- 
telmy walked his horse, bridle over arm. 

“Peter’s a great boy, isn’t he?” he said. The remark called 
for no special answer, but Effie did not think of that. Sfye was 
frankly enthusiastic about Peter, and, up to that moment, had 
no suspicion that she needed to hold her enthusiasm in check. 

“Peter’s more than a great boy,” she said. “He’s one of the 
best. I have a feeling that the day will come when we’ll all 
be proud that we knew him when he was just a farmer’s son.” 

Which was not exactly the direction Bartelmy had chosen 
for the conversation. Said he, “That’s right. He’s going to 
be a solid citizen. And don’t you think he’s showing good 
judgment in shining up to Lizzie Albright? The two farms 
join, you know, and Lizzie’s the only child.” 

It was Effie’s turn to wish the conversation might have taken 
another direction. But she could not help asking, “How do 
you know he’s shining up to Lizzie, as you call it? She’s never 
said anything—I mean, I think I should be likely to know 
about any such thing, seeing that I’ve been living there this 
spring.” 

“I supposed you did,” said Bartelmy glibly, having had a 
little practice. “You know he’s been over there several times 
lately. And that’s a new thing for him.” 

Effie did know. Lizzie had told her that. And she remem¬ 
bered that Lizzie had taken pains to tell her how Peter had 
“asked after her.” That might mean much or little. But what 
came to her with a sort of hurt was that suggestion about the 
farms. They joined, true enough; and the two places com¬ 
pleted each other. What could be more natural than that 
Peter, who would get the Middleton home place some day, 
should think of those three Albright quarter-sections, with one 
of them including an undeveloped water power, and another 
having the best timber on Paint Creek? 

So through the summer it happened that when Effie and 
Peter met, their attitude toward each other was careful enough; 
more careful than natural, though neither would have confessed 
to any sense of strain. 

As August passed, Effie became too busy with her own af¬ 
fairs to think so much of what Bartelmy had told her. Fall 


SHODDY 


53 


was approaching, and she had not yet found a school. She 
went here and there making inquiries, but to no purpose, until 
one day word came that District 14, just across the line in 
Fayette County, was still looking for a teacher, but that the 
vacancy might be filled any moment now. 

Though the threshers were coming to Albrights the next day, 
Effie felt that she must try for that school. So she borrowed 
the Albright buggy and the one old horse which was of little 
use in the threshing, and set out. It was eleven miles, a long- 
ish drive for the time between the finishing of the morning’s 
kitchen work and supper time, and Mrs. Albright and Lizzie 
would need all possible assistance, so that Effie refused to be 
away for more than one meal. 

Peter and Bartelmy came over to help with the threshing. 
The two farms always exchanged work, and few men could 
cut bands as deftly as Peter. Bartelmy was assigned to the 
straw pile, to take the straw as it came from the carrier, and 
keep it built up evenly. It was dirty work, and hot, and al¬ 
ways given to the least skilled, but it took less out of a man 
than any other threshing-time job. 

A't dinner Peter missed Effie. He asked Lizzie, “Where’s Ef¬ 
fie today, of all days?” It was in the few moments of rest 
which everybody took just before starting up the long after¬ 
noon’s operations, for the job had to be finished by dusk. The 
two had strolled to the fence at the east side of the yard, next 
to the young orchard, and as they talked they looked over at 
the distant slopes across the creek, where they could see Al¬ 
bright cattle and Middleton cattle, summer grazing on the 
open range. 

Lizzie explained how Effie had heard about the school over 
in Fayette, and how she had to apply for it at once or chance 
finding that the place had been filled. 

The threshing crew worked late, and finished clean. Before 
the men came up to the row of tin wash basins, on a bench in 
the yard, Effie was back from her long drive, and hard at work 
helping to put the final touches to the big supper which the 
threshers expected to be ready for them. 

She had returned in triumph, her contract signed, and even 
in the midst of the bustle she managed to satisfy the more in¬ 
sistent demands of Lizzie’s inquiring mind. 

Yes; it was an eight months’ school, with a long vacation 


54 


SHODDY 


between the fall and winter terms. Salary thirty-five a 
month. She could get board at the standard rate of eight dol¬ 
lars, with a family by the name of Heintz,—Pennsylvania 
Dutch, and so pretty sure to set a good table. About thirty or 
forty scholars, she thought. 

After supper Peter hurried home, tired with the long day 
and his heavy-duty job. He had been taking more responsi¬ 
bility at home this summer, and his pride would not let him 
fail in any of it;—especially now. 

Bartelmy lingered at Albright’s after supper. He wanted to 
talk with Effie; to hear of her school, and, as always, to do what 
he might in his own behalf. 

They went out to the front stoop, and sat there looking down 
into the stiff little garden which Lizzie and her mother had kept 
fenced off from the intrusions of their wide-ranging Plymouth 
Rocks. 

When Effie had told her story of the day’s adventure, Bar- 
telemy became reminiscent. “Well,” said he, “that means one 
of your dreams has come true, doesn’t it? Remember how 
you said, back in Westchester, that you’d turn up in the West 
before long, and would become a school teacher, too? You 
did turn up; and now you have your school.” 

“It isn’t much,” Effie said, musingly. “A little frame school- 
house at a cross roads, with not a tree on the grounds, and al¬ 
most nothing inside to work with. But it’s a beginning, and 
I’m going to make myself like it.” 

“Much or little,” said Bartelmy, a touch of envy in his voice, 
“you’ve beaten me. I knew you would. You had a better 
start. But I’ll be coming along. I’ve got to catch up with 
you. And you know why.” 

Effie parried, “How was the threshing today?” 

“Never mind the threshing,” Bartelmy said with poorly con¬ 
cealed irritation, “it was hot and dirty; but it’s over, thank 
goodness. I was talking about you. Why can’t we have some 
sort of an understanding, now that we’re to be separated for a 
long time? An understanding”—as a little devil of an idea 
suggested itself—“something like Peter and Lizzie.” 

Once again, as when Bartelmy had linked these names be¬ 
fore, Effie found herself asking a question and wishing that she 
didn’t care what its answer might be. “What makes you think 
they have what you call an understanding?” 


SHODDY 


55 


“How could anybody help thinking it?” he countered. “You’d 
have guessed it all right if you had seen them at noon. After 
dinner they were talking quite a while over at the east orchard 
fence, and pointed over to the creek where the long riffle is and 
to the big timber, and* to their cattle on the range. They seemed 
to be mightily interested.” 

If Effie had dared, she would have combatted all the implica¬ 
tions of his words. But she could not be sure he was wrong. 
And why shouldn’t they understand each other? She saw again 
the practical advantage of joining the two farms. Albright’s 
had the best timber, and the place for developing water power, 
and Middleton’s had the widest stretch of level, rich bottom 
land. If she forgot that Peter might be as little mercenary as 
herself, it was no more than many a maiden forgets when she 
thinks of the ways of errant lovers. But she was in no mood 
to listen to Bartelmy, and went indoors, saying she had had a 
long day, and was too tired to talk. 

When he had gone, accepting for the moment his failure to 
secure an “understanding,” and she and Lizzie were alone, Effie 
sought some way of approach to the subject uppermost in her 
mind. But there was none. Lizzie could have settled every¬ 
thing with a word, but Effie would not ask her to speak it. In¬ 
deed, Lizzie herself, by a most innocent remark, ended all 
chance of explanation. 

“It was awful clear over east this noon, for such a hot day,” 
she said. “Right after dinner Peter and I were looking across 
the creek, and we could see the cattle on the range just as 
plain; their Shorthorns and our Herefords, all grazing together, 
and some of them had gone clear to the top of Mount Tabor.” 

VIII 

So when Peter sent word the next week that he was coming 
over on Wednesday evening to say goodby, Effie made an errand 
for herself, so that she might spend that night with her Aunt 
Fairchild. Peter had thought nothing of the other times when 
he had missed seeing her, but this was too plainly a purposed 
absence. He could think of no good reason why anybody 
should ever go to the Fairchild place. Certainly one day would 
have served her as well as another, for that, if she hadn’t meant 
to keep out his way. He wouldn’t have presumed, as she 


56 


SHODDY 


might have known. If she and Bartelmy were really anything 
to each other, he might surely have been trusted to keep that 
fact in mind. 

Peter, hurt as much in his pride as in any feeling less easily 
defined, said to himself, “Very well,” and made his farewells 
to the Albrights, with an omission of Effie’s name so studied 
that Lizzie marvelled, though not openly. She was too well 
versed in Paint Creek etiquette for that. 

Two days later he was off for Calder College. His final in¬ 
terview with his father had been hard, but not so hard as he 
had feared. 

The old radical could not help a prickle of pride in this 
sturdy-willed son of his. It was youth rebelling again, as he 
well knew how youth could rebel. If only it had been an out¬ 
break like his own in the ’48! But because it was over such a 
delusion as religion, and especially such a religious delusion as 
Christianity, he hardened his heart. 

“You’ll go your own road, Peter,” he had said, “and I shan’t 
try to head you off. We must all learn our own way. But, 
as I told you before, there’s no money of mine for your educa¬ 
tion so long as you make religion the reason for your choice of 
a school. Come home in the vacations, of course, if you stick 
it out that long. If you change your mind, I’m ready to foot 
all your bills at the State University.” 

To which Peter had responded, “Thank you, Father; that’s 
fair enough, feeling as you do. I don’t think my mind will 
change, but it’s good to know that you leave the way open. 
And I’ll try not to disgrace you, even if I can’t see things as 
you do.” 

And so they parted manfully, shaking hands and even smil¬ 
ing a little. 

It had been not at all the same with his mother. She under¬ 
stood both of her men better than either understood the other. 
In her own room she informed Peter that he wasn’t to make 
any fuss about it, and needn’t try to refuse it,—she had put a 
hundred dollars into the little flap pocket of his suitcase. Her 
savings had piled up lately, faster than she expected; maybe 
just for this. She had thought there would be no more than 
fifty dollars, but, when she had counted it all up, to her sur¬ 
prise it was just over a hundred. It was her own money, egg 
and butter money, mostly, she said, and he must take it. Take 


SHODDY 


57 


it he did, with no loss of his high pride and self-sufficiency. 
She was that sort of a mother. So she kissed him, and Jim 
drove him to Odessa to catch the noon train south. 


CHAPTER IV 


I 

Peter Middleton was not long in finding himself, once he 
was at Calder. The school was made up of such boys and girls 
as he had known at home; most of them were in the academic 
department, which was the euphemism of the period for col¬ 
lege preparatory. Less than a hundred students were able to 
take college work unvexed by prep conditions. 

He got a room’ over a store, and furnished it with bits of 
second-hand stuff which had served several generations of stu¬ 
dents. Bartelmy and he had arranged to room together, where¬ 
fore he stocked the room for two. Even so it was sufficiently 
Spartan. 

The class work was no great matter. He found he ranked 
in general somewhere about sub-freshman, for he had a mixed 
lot of credits from Odessa High School. And so he was just 
settling himself for the year when Bartelmy turned up at the 
beginning of October. 

Bartelmy’s standing, scholastically, was peculiar. He had had 
the equivalent of perhaps one year’s high school work. But of 
course he had no formal credits. He was much too mature for 
the sub-prep classes. So Vice President Schroeder, who trusted 
much to his intuitions and was trusted implicitly by the Presi¬ 
dent in these matters, decided to give Bart an oral examina¬ 
tion not at all in accord with the formal terms of the catalog. 

The upshot was that Professor Schroeder entered him as 
straight sub-freshman, and also gave him permission to take one 
study each term, as offered, with the freshman or the sopho¬ 
more class. 

He found himself able to manage the studies after his fash¬ 
ion. Soon he began to appear in minor assignments on the 
Hamiltonian Literary Society programs. He had a frothy sort 
of fluency which made him easier on his feet than most of the 
boys, and his reading had given him considerable literary cap¬ 
ital; glittering, if not gold. 


58 


SHODDY 


59 


Calder College being about the only excuse for the existence 
of the town, the Methodist Church and the college had many 
things in common. The church depended on the college, and 
particularly on its rule of compulsory church attendance, for 
half or more of its Sunday congregation, and drew from the 
students an even larger proportion of Sunday School workers 
and members of the choir. The annual protracted meetings in 
the church were arranged only after full consultation with the 
President, all the more because in the main they were a direct 
effort in behalf of unconverted students. The students’ home 
folks were supposed greatly to prefer a college revival, as com¬ 
pared, say, with close adherence to the schedule of academic 
studies. This was also the mind of the patronizing conference, 
which continually kept a weather eye out for any signs of dimin¬ 
ished spirituality in students or faculty. 

In late October the pastor began his preliminary sermons,— 
a time-honored method of awakening the faithful to the need 
of preparation for the coming harvest of souls. He told the 
people, as aforetime, that, if they really desired a revival, it 
must first spring up in the hearts of those now within the fold. 

Then, early in November, the revival meetings themselves 
began. They were held every night, except Saturday, and the 
professors lightened all lesson assignments for the period of the 
meetings. Everybody was supposed to attend. 

Peter and Bartelmy took their first college revival, each in 
his own way. Bartelmy answered the first call made for vol¬ 
unteers to form a choir. He saw that membership in the choir 
set one a little apart from and above the crowd, and so would 
provide a measure of public notice. Thornlea had seen to it 
that he could sing quite well enough to meet the not too ex¬ 
acting requirements of a Kansas revival. And, as he discovered 
when the “personal work” began, members of the choir were 
tacitly exempt from the general draft which sent every other 
professed Christian, the moment word was given, out into the 
audience to come to grips with sinners and coax them to “the 
altar.” 

To Peter the revival was almost pure misery. The preach¬ 
ing, direct and sincere as it undoubtedly was, took for granted 
a vast deal of theology and experience as to whose validity he 
was by no means convinced. The trouble, he told himself, 
must be that he had no church background. Revival methods, 


60 


SHODDY 


except for his brief and slight experience of them at Fairdale, 
were unfamiliar, and he confessed to himself, a trifle repellent. 
He foresaw that they might easily become embarrassing. 

Because he had “brought his letter,” he was naturally con¬ 
sidered a Christian of the prevailing type, the more so because 
he had been greatly drawn to the pastor, and had been treated 
most cordially by him. So he knew it would be taken for 
granted that he would conform to the customs of the occasion. 

Night after night, once the sermon was ended, the call would 
sound;—“Now let all who are burdened for souls go out in 
search of the lost among their friends, and bring them to 
Jesus!” 

In the momentary confusion of the general response he 
would arise with the others, and would wander aimlessly down 
the aisle, seeking only not to be noticed more than could be 
helped. He almost envied the assured bearing of those work¬ 
ers who had no hesitation in approaching their fellow-students 
on what he felt to be the most delicate and personal of themes; 
though he soon learned that this, too, was a ritual. For him¬ 
self, he was in deadly terror lest some sinner, all too willing 
to be won, should catch his eye. 

One night, as the workers moved about among the reluctant, 
the recalcitrant and the penitent, the choir, with Bartelmy’s 
baritone easily recognizable to Peter above the rest, sang with 
dash and spirit, “We have heard a joyful sound: Jesus saves!” 
Peter was well-nigh desperate. He had spoken to nobody, and 
felt sure that his obvious cowardice had been observed by all. 
His mood was not resentful, but bewildered. Certainly he had 
nothing to say to any of these students, many of them ahead 
of him in college. Yet he did honestly want to help, if he 
could, and to let people know that he did. But how? 

At that moment he was abreast of the pews near the door, 
and in one of them he saw that the only occupant was a Negro 
boy of about his own age. Nobody else seemed to have noticed 
this boy, who glanced up with dull, lack-luster eyes. An im¬ 
pulse just strong enough to carry him into the pew stirred in 
Peter, and he slipped down beside the other. Quite without 
premeditation he said huskily, in an agony of shyness, “Does 
all this make you want to be a Christian?” 

The boy said “Yes,” as ill at ease as his questioner. He had 
not expected to be approached, and, in fact, but for Peter he 


SHODDY 


61 


would have been carefully left undisturbed. Then Peter lifted 
them both out of their embarrassment, because he knew no 
better than to do the natural thing. Said he, “I’m as ignorant 
about it all as anybody can be. Let’s try to help each other. 
If you’ll help me, I’ll do as much for you, if I can.” In his 
relief, the Negro smiled broadly. 

For ten minutes they whispered; their heads bowed and 
close together,—the Negro giving ready assent to everything 
his friendly though amateur instructor said. Peter was out¬ 
lining an honest but, if he had known, a highly unconventional 
plan of salvation. 

Just as he had asked, and the boy had answered, the last 
question he could think of, there came over him the direful 
realization that the next thing to do was to lead his trophy to 
the altar, in the sight of all. To do him justice, he gave no 
thought to the color of his convert, if convert he was, but only 
to the gauntlet which the two of them must run between this 
rear pew and the distant chancel rail. Fortunately, no one— 
with a single exception—had noticed his adventure of despera¬ 
tion, and, while he was dreading the next move, with immense 
relief he heard the voice of President McBean pronouncing the 
benediction. 

As the congregation moved toward the door, Miss Buckland, 
professor of English, German and History said to Peter, “That 
was a brave thing you did tonight. Don’t let it trouble you.” 
For she saw the quick ernbarrassment in his face. 

II 

By the end of the fall term Bartelmy’s funds began to need 
attention. Rent was only a matter of two dollars a month 
apiece, and boarding club meals were a shade under ten cents 
a meal, say two dollars a week. But Bartelmy had only enough 
to carry him more than a few weeks into the winter term, since 
the fifteen dollars for tuition must be paid the first week. 
Peter was more opulent, but equally frugal. 

Peter’s interest in books, and Miss Buckland’s encourage¬ 
ment, had made him a frequent visitor at the town’s one book 
emporium,—it carried more side lines than a drug store,—but 
also it did a fair though conservative business in general liter¬ 
ature. He began to discuss the stock with the young lady in 


62 


SHODDY 


charge, something of an authority in her way. The store’s 
farmer-owner, Fletcher by name, would not trust his sales¬ 
manship in the higher reaches of the intellectual merchandise 
he stocked, but left that branch of the business to Miss Straker. 

Now Miss Straker was to be married early in the year, and 
she and Peter had talked a little about the possibility of his 
becoming her successor in the store. A student could handle 
the job nicely, as to time, for the morning’s trade in books and 
similar goods was negligible, and Mr. Fletcher felt entirely 
competent to show and vend such wall-paper, toys, and school 
supplies as his other customers might call for. 

In the end, as Miss Straker casually told Bartelmy one 
morning, she had taken it on herself to mention Peter’s name 
as a possible new clerk, and Mr. Fletcher seemed not inhos¬ 
pitable to the suggestion. Both Peter and Miss Straker were 
the more surprised therefore, not to say disturbed, when, the 
very next day, the old gentleman told her that he had decided 
to give the place to Bartelmy Bonafede. 

“I can’t understand it, Mr. Middleton,” the young lady de¬ 
clared, when Peter dropped in that afternoon, “and I don’t 
see why he did it. I never even knew that Mr. Bonafede had 
been thinking of the store.” 

“Nor I,” said Peter shortly. He did his best to keep from 
suspecting Bartelmy, but it surely seemed queer. 

It would not have seemed so queer if he had known of the 
interview between Bartelmy and Mr. Fletcher, the day before. 
Bartelmy’s dwindling resources meant more than a hint of short 
commons. They spoke to him of the fear which struck always 
at such times as this. He had no sure knowledge where next 
month’s living was to come from. Panic insecurity came down 
on him in all its ancient terror. Once more he felt that he had 
burned his bridges behind him, with no assurance as to the 
nature of the undiscovered country ahead. What a fool! He 
recalled Miss Straker’s incidental reference to the opening, and 
grasped at it. Seeking the owner out at his home that night, 
he told him his story,—the story that in the emergency his 
hopes and fears had produced. 

It was an adroit approach, and his bearing did full homage 
to the established forms. 

“Peter would take the job, I think,” he said to Mr. Fletcher, 
with disarming frankness, “and he would be as good a man as 


SHODDY 


63 


you could get. He and I are roommates, you know,—we came 
here together. Only there really isn’t much reason for him to 
work. He’s the son of one of the best-fixed farmers on Paint 
Creek. If you should decide not to give it to him, I’d be glad 
to have you consider me.” 

It was a shrewd instinct by which Bartelmy hit on this one 
sure appeal. Doubly a stranger,—to the West itself, and to 
its peculiar institution, the poverty-stricken, struggling church 
college, he had discovered the single string which could be 
counted on to vibrate to his touch. 

In every college town, all through the West, everybody was 
in league to help indigent students. Where nobody was rich, 
there were yet varying levels of circumstances, and it was a 
point of honor that any poor boy who wanted an education 
should be helped to get it. He must needs work, certainly, and 
for small pay; but he must have his chance. The West had 
not been brought up for nothing on “The Hoosier Schoolmaster” 
and “From Tow-Path to White House.” To support college 
students and the college itself was at once missionary and ro¬ 
mantic—an irresistible combination. 

Since Bartelmy obviously incarnated the educational ortho¬ 
doxy of his time and place, and since it appeared that Peter’s 
folks were well-to-do, Bartelmy had all the advantage. Mr. 
Fletcher reacted normally, and Bartelmy got the job, with its 
four dollars a week. 

He was careful to make no explanation, and he felt rightly 
that Peter would ask for none. As for Mr. Fletcher, he had 
no idea that there was anything in the incident that needed 
explaining. 

In a way, Bartelmy tried to set things straight with Peter, 
on the guess that Peter might suspect. Late the same after¬ 
noon, in the room, he brought up the subject and said, “Of 
course I wouldn’t take the place if I thought you wanted it. 
Miss Straker just told me you were going to apply for it, but 
I didn’t know that you had.” Which was true, though the 
“just” was one of Bartelmy’s easy little euphemisms. Peter 
hadn’t applied. And, being too proud to say that if he had 
there was every reason to suppose he could have had the job, 
he merely observed quietly that it was all right with him, and 
hoped Bart would like the place. 

The next day Peter made a contract to cut and split cord 


64 


SHODDY 


wood, at twelve cents an hour. This would give him what in¬ 
come he needed for the year to supplement his mother’s gift. 

hi 

Living from hand to mouth as the two boys had done, the 
end of the school year found them at the end also of their 
financial resources. Halfway into the spring term Bartelmy 
had begun to be anxious about the summer. What should he 
do? What could he do? Where could he go? 

A few half-hearted inquiries among the students discovered 
nothing more hopeful than the offer of a photographic view 
company, whose sales manager was drumming up agents to 
canvass in the small towns and the open country for its justly 
famous stereoscopes and their accompanying “views.” 

But Bartelmy was not drawn to this sort of labor. It meant 
a different—and most uncertain—stopping place every night. 
It meant risk, initiative, the unknown. 

One day he said to Peter, “What’s your plan for the summer, 
Peter? Does your father expect you to work at home?” 

And Peter said, “Oh, yes; Dad told me last fall to come home 
whenever I got ready, and he has repeated the invitation sev¬ 
eral times since. He’d be glad to have me show up any time, 
but I guess he doesn’t really expect me till school is out. 
There’ll be plenty of work. Always is. And he means to pay 
me, from now on. He’s said so. Dad may be stubborn, but 
he’s sure to be fair, and a little more.” 

The spark of hope glowed brighter in Bartelmy’s heart. 
“Do you suppose there might be work enough for me, too?” he 
asked. “I’d rather be there on the farm than do anything else 
I’ve heard of. It would give me something to do until I found 
whether I could get a school.” 

“So you’ve decided to teach next year?” asked Peter, in¬ 
wardly out of humor with himself, that he could not rise as 
cordially as he should to Bart’s suggestion about the farm. 
Well, he had been saying that his father was a just man; he 
would try to be no less fair himself. 

And when Bart said, “I think I’ll try to get a certificate at 
the Institute, if I can make enough beforehand to pay my ex¬ 
penses;” Peter met his first query squarely. 

“Why yes,” he said, “I’m sure there will be something. I 


SHODDY 


65 


was expecting to break away at harvest, after our own stuff 
is in, and go with the thrashers up to the end of vacation. 
There’s more money in that.” 

His desire to make atonement for his unspoken coldness 
prompted him still further, he added, “I’ll tell you what; let 
me write to Dad about it. If you are willing to work around, 
as I expect to do, after the heavy work at home is over, I’m 
pretty sure Dad will take you on for the rest of the time,” 

IV 

Within a few days Father Middleton had been heard from, 
and once more Bartelmy felt he had escaped the thing which 
most he feared,—out of a job and nowhere to go. 

Institute greatly interested Bart. It thought to initiate him 
into the mysteries of cramming for an examination, but he re¬ 
membered from Thornlea days the coming of the school in¬ 
spector, and the desperate two weeks before each visit; so he 
was not afraid of what this mild approximation of the reality 
might bring. 

Then, while Peter slipped easily into the work of the farm, 
Bart set out in search of a school. Just before his aching legs 
refused to carry him on another day’s wanderings, he closed 
with the three trustees of Signal Hill School, so called because 
a tall tower of the United States Geodetic Survey overlooked 
the upland valley in which the district lay. 

By the end of the summer, Peter had almost made his 
peace with his father. Not entirely. That old revolutionary 
was less than frank with his son, being more interested in the 
working out of the boy’s purpose than he would admit. He 
relented so far as to make Peter’s course easier, in all ways ex¬ 
cept financial. At that point he remained obdurant, though 
secretly he knew that the reason for his firmness had changed. 
Now he saw not only that Peter meant to go through with the 
venture, but that, whatever its other results, it would not harm 
the essential man in him. So, unless an emergency arose, he 
would let Peter win through alone. And Peter, to his own sur¬ 
prise, found that he was not sorry. 

If Bartelmy’s Signal Hill pupils learned little, neither were 
they harried by a fretful and unsympathetic teacher. That 
he made their tasks light was no crime in their eyes, and the 


66 


SHODDY 


patrons, who knew nothing at all of the class work, looked on 
him as a prodigy of resourcefulness. 

The social life of the neighborhood was at a low point. Bart, 
in his abundant leisure, began to see possibilities in the school- 
house as a social center. Most of the farm homes were too 
small for the “parties” so dear to the young men and maidens 
of those days, and Bart, with the help of his older pupils, 
pulled off one or two “programs,” as he called them, at the 
schoolhouse to which everybody, young and old, came with 
pathetic eagerness for escape from the daily dullness of the 
valley. 

He drew on the resources of Calder, writing to some of his 
fellow Hamiltonians for the simple materials he needed. He 
made a crude copying device, and started a school paper,—an 
almost startling innovation for that day in rural Kansas. The 
Friday afternoon exercises became, once a month or so, Friday 
night programs. The people, starved for any sort of common 
recreation, responded in a way to flatter his sense of impor¬ 
tance, and he extended himself to satisfy the demand his activ¬ 
ities had created. 

Effie, in her second school, was a dozen miles away, in Wilk- 
insville, the county seat of the next county. Bart managed to 
ride a borrowed horse into town every other Sunday or so. 
He quite understood that Effie, as a city teacher, out-ranked 
him, and it was not the lightest of his recommendations in her 
eyes that he never forgot it. Indeed, he had always deferred to 
Effie. 

One Sunday afternoon in the Spring they walked the long 
road eastward, and climbed the hill to the reservoir. Here they 
sat to rest on the coping of the great storage basin. They 
talked of the summer and its plans. Bart had an offer from 
Storekeeper Fletcher, who had struggled through a difficult 
season without an assistant, to spend the summer in the book¬ 
store, and give it the first real stock-taking for many years. 
Effie would visit a little at Albright’s, though she felt no great 
pleasure in the prospect. Then she would come back to Wilk- 
insville for the rest of the summer, as companion and helper to 
the one literary lady the town could boast. This lady had two 
remarkably leggy girls in Effie’s room at school, and since she 
had biographies of many Fayette citizens to write, which a 
great publishing house expected to incorporate in the Fayette 


SHODDY 


67 


County edition of its monumental History of Kansas—affec¬ 
tionately called, by the younger Kansas editors of the period, 
the “Herd Book”—she would need help with the housework 
and the girls. 

Housework was nothing to lose caste over; caste in the 
Kansas of these days dealt with other matters; and the pay 
would help to keep her savings intact for college. 

As they sat on the reservoir’s edge the talk became remi¬ 
niscent; then personal. Suddenly Bart said, ‘Effie, we’re a year 
older, now, than when I tried to speak of this before, and life 
is opening up to us maybe better than we expected, then. You 
know I love you. You know I’m planning to be a preacher. 
Will you wait for me, and let us take up life in the ministry 
together?” 

He drew her awkwardly to him and she did not resist. Why 
should she? Scarce to herself would she admit that Peter Mid¬ 
dleton had ever held any place in her thought, and, anyhow, 
that was all past. Besides, she had always cared for Bart. If 
her feeling was not ardent enough to be the young love of the 
novelists, it was at least affectionate, and at times protective 
and mothering. From the beginning she had known that Bart 
needed the sort of help she could give. And she was not dis¬ 
pleased at the prospect of being a preacher’s wife. Few serious- 
minded girls of her time were. So she looked into his face, 
and, as she lifted up her own for his kiss, she smiled. It was 
all very quiet, very sensible; no raptures, no ecstasies, no non¬ 
sense. “All right, Bart;” she said, “it’s a bargain. I’ll wait 
for you if you’ll wait for me. Only remember; wait is the 
word. We’re in for a good long time of waiting. I’m coming 
to Calder in the fall, to get ready for a better position. So no 
foolishness, young man.” 


v 

While Bartelmy was struggling with his Signal Hill School, 
Peter had plugged away at Calder, making no great record in 
his studies, but making a few fast friends, mainly among those 
students who had a certain independence of speech and pur¬ 
pose. His association with them made no bones of the accepted 
cleavages of the college groups, whether athletic or social or 
religious. He, a member of the Areopagus Literary Society, 


68 


SHODDY 


roomed with a leader of the Hamiltonians. He shared his 
Greek studies with one of the earliest of Calder’s football stars, 
and of all his friends the choicest, Eugene Eberle, was a man 
who had no interest in sports. 

Eberle, besides being older than Peter, had already found 
his vocation. Not yet an ordained minister, his local preacher’s 
license permitted him to act as supply pastor of a small country 
church some five or six miles from Calder. 

Eberle went to Peter one day with what Peter thought a 
queer request. An old preacher-friend of Eberle’s had died, 
and the funeral service, to be held some forty miles away, was 
set for Sunday. Eberle made much of his wish to go, while 
lamenting to Peter that he could get nobody to take his morn¬ 
ing appointment at Blue Oak. 

By and by he said, “Peter, old man, you go to Blue Oak for 
me.” 

Peter flatly refused; and refused again when Eberle urged 
the proposal on him. But he could not stand out against his 
friend’s desire to pay tribute to the old minister, and in the 
end he agreed to go, thinking not at all at the moment of what 
a promise to preach at Blue Oak might mean to a somewhat 
uncertain Christian young fellow who had never attempted to 
preach at all. 

That came later. Whereupon he sought out Eberle and said, 
“See here, Eugene, I’ve been thinking about Blue Oak. How 
can I go? I’ve no right to go. You know I’m not even an 
exhorter, nor wanting to be. I forgot that I should have to 
pretend to know something. Where’d I get a sermon? And 
how do I know that the Blue Oak people will let me try to 
preach it if I should get one? I don’t even know the order of 
service!” 

Eberle laughed. “Don’t you care about any of that,” he 
said, “there’s nothing High Church about Blue Oak. I’ll give 
you all the coaching you need on the order of service. It won’t 
take you five minutes to get it. And, as for a sermon, why 
preach at all? The folks would much rather have a straight 
talk on something that really interests you. Don’t try to be 
preachery. You can’t. Besides, they’ve been preached at and 
about and over so long that they are always thankful for a 
change. You’ll make a hit; see if you don’t.” 

Peter knew better, but in other respects things turned out 


SHODDY 


69 


very much as Eberle had said. Casting about for something to 
say, and taking for granted it must be Biblical, he chanced 
on a few paragraphs of illustrative stuff in his rhetoric text¬ 
book; part of a sermon by a minister named Milburn, whose 
double distinction was that he was blind and also chaplain to 
the United States Senate. 

The sermon attracted Peter because, like many thoughtful 
young Christians, he had often wondered at the swiftness of 
early Christianity’s spread. The blind preacher, taking the 
Great Commission as his text, had emphasized the marvel, that 
a handful of Galilean peasants, publicans and fishermen actu¬ 
ally set themselves to the task of obeying Christ’s “Go ye.” 
Without money, without influence, without learning, speaking 
only a single language, and that a mere back-country patios, 
they had laid seige to the pagan world of their day—and in 
three centuries captured it! 

Peter felt the appeal of this romantic history as though it had 
just been told for the first time. He made it his own theme, 
and something of the sense of its daring and devotion managed 
to pass from him to the people at Blue Oak on that Sunday 
morning. 

Quite simply and frankly he wrote of it to his father. He 
felt, not knowing why, that Henry Middleton was becoming 
more tolerant, and as he put down on paper some of the ideas 
he had presented in his Blue Oak talk, they seemed to him, as 
indeed they seemed also to the old man, a few days later, to be 
much the same thoughts he had heard from his father’s lips; 
thoughts which in the old days in Germany had stirred Heinrich 
Mittelstadt to revolt, and to new ventures in a new world. 

vi 

Bart took hold of his summer’s job at Fletcher’s bookstore. 
He knew he could make the inventory and its by-products last 
him until school opened, and the sooner he began the sooner he 
would be drawing his ten a week. On the way he spent half a 
day at the Middletons with Peter, just home from Calder. Bart 
found opportunity to tell Peter of his and Effie’s engagement, 
and took some little secret satisfaction in seeing that the news 
was unwelcome, much as Peter tried to be unconcerned and con¬ 
gratulatory. 


70 


SHODDY 


Peter knew that Effie was to visit at the Albrights, having 
had that piece of news from Lizzie. When he heard it, the news 
had been pleasant. But Bart had spoiled it beyond remedy. 
He would see Effie now only as Bart’s betrothed; he had hoped 
against hope for a summer altogether different. 

There was a party at the Albrights. Peter went, and behaved 
like a spoil-sport. If Effie noticed his aloofness she kept her 
thoughts to herself, and towards the end of the evening she had 
laughed him out of his rather moody heroics. She was a little 
surprised that he seemed to avoid Lizzie Albright, and wondered 
if something had happened to interfere with their interest in 
each other. 

But just as the party was breaking up she had evidence which 
convinced her that Peter and Lizzie had an understanding, and 
was surprised that the discovery depressed her. 

Peter had been over on the range the day before, and men¬ 
tioned the fact to Lizzie and Effie as he was saying good night. 
He remembered that Mr. Albright had asked for some informa¬ 
tion about his Hereford yearlings, which were running with the 
Middleton herd. 

“I forgot to tell your father about the cattle, Lizzie; will you 
tell him for me?” 

And he drew her aside to give the innocent and quite uninter¬ 
esting details; but Effie saw in the low-voiced talk another evi¬ 
dence that these two meant to combine romance with cattle and 
line fences. 

When Calder’s doors opened in the fall, Effie presented her¬ 
self for enrolment in the Normal Department, and hoped to 
take some music. She had saved money enough for the year, 
and had no qualms about spending it. She knew how to get 
more. 

Peter, too, came back with money in his purse. In his own 
way, Henry Middleton had capitulated, but he had capitulated. 

He had called Peter into his room just before the wagon was 
ready to take the boy and his trunk to Odessa. 

“Peter,” said his father, “I haven’t changed my mind about 
your stubbornness over this college business. But I don’t want 
you to make a wreck of yourself, as well as a fool. If you cut 
wood at twelve cents an hour, you can’t get the only education 
that’s worth shucks, if any is. So I’m going to advance you 
enough to keep you going. You can call it a loan, but there 


SHODDY 


71 


won’t be any interest on it, and you’ll pay it back when you 
can.” 

Peter could not guess what his father was thinking, and the 
older man was secretly amazed at himself. It was disturbing, 
that he could contemplate such a future as he now saw becoming 
a possibility for his boy. It shook him as Peter’s mere going to 
college had not done. Suppose Peter should actually become 
a preacher! 

A year ago he would have thrust the thought angrily away. 
Now he was sore troubled, but he was not angry. He had tried 
to be, and had failed. Why? Why could he not call up his old 
contempt for preachers and preaching? Could it be only be¬ 
cause Peter was his son; or were his lifelong opinions suffering 
a change? 

One reflection gave him some little comfort. If Peter must 
be a preacher, it was certain he would not be one of those rant¬ 
ing windbags who made up in noise what they lacked in convic¬ 
tion. Peter had always thought his way through, and when he 
got through he wouldn’t need to become violent about it. He 
had sense enough not to confuse assertion with assurance. 

And, thought the old man, the churches could be glad to get 
such a recruit as Peter. He would have a career. 

VII 

Effie’s coming to Calder was not without its awkward side. 
Peter felt it most, and wondered how he would be able to avoid 
anything that might betray him or annoy her. Bartelmy was 
not quite at ease in his mind, yet he was debarred not only from 
open admission but even from the secret facing of his disquiet. 
Effie had least reason for concern, but even she was not unaware 
that the situation had possibilities of embarrassment. 

Bart and Peter did not room together this year. Bartelmy 
had found a new friend in the football coach—the first of his 
tribe at Calder—and was sharing a room with him. Peter 
roomed alone. 

Just before the brief spring vacation, Eugene Eberle said to 
Peter one day, “Blue Oak calls you again, Peter. I need some¬ 
body to help me in a revival out there. The people liked you 
that time you preached for me; come on and try your hand at 
this other job.” 


72 


SHODDY 


To Peter no invitation could have been less welcome. The 
memory of the revival in sub-freshman year still hurt, as he 
saw himself again huddled in the rear pew with the Negro boy 
who was the one highly doubtful trophy of his “personal work.” 

“I can’t do that sort of thing, Eberle,” he protested. “I 
simply can’t. It’s got to be done, I know; but not by me. Get 
somebody who know's how and who likes it.” 

“Don’t want ’em,” Eberle growled. “I want you, just be¬ 
cause you don’t like it. If you go into the ministry, as I think 
you will, you’ll have to do it. But you needn’t be spoiled by 
going at it as some of the boys do. They call me a heretic, as 
you know. Well, I’m willing to be a heretic on revivals, any¬ 
how, if they’ll let me go after sinners my own way. And you 
have the stuff in you for the sort of evangelism that isn’t popu¬ 
lar yet. But it will be. So you come along, and put in a week 
with me at Blue Oak.” 

Peter did not cease from his objections, but in the end he 
went. 

Eberle’s revival method puzzled Peter at first. By the only 
tests Peter knew, the affair wasn’t a revival at all. Of course his 
experience was limited, and yet Kansas revivals of that period 
had no uniqueness; they were but variations on a theme,— the 
theme being that any community had just two sorts of people, 
the saved and the unsaved; the one group was saved and knew 
it, and the other was unsaved and knew it; the transition from 
unsaved to saved came by an emotional climax at the mourners’ 
bench,—which was beginning to be called, with the West’s new 
concern for elegance and its old indifference to accuracy, “the 
altar.” 

Though Peter knew Eberle for an independent soul, it did not 
occur to him, despite the other’s warning, that a revival could 
be anything other than the revivals he had known. So he was 
not prepared for the quiet and unchurchly atmosphere of his 
first evening at Blue Oak. 

There was an opening song or two, and a prayer by Pastor 
Eberle; but even so early Peter felt the difference.' The song 
was “Break thou the bread of life;” the prayer held to the same 
key—a seeking for guidance, knowledge, light. And the preach¬ 
er took for his text Paul’s steadying word; “For God hath not 
given us the spirit of fear, but of love, and of power, and of a 
sound mind.” 


SHODDY 


73 


It was not a sermon; nothing more than a friendly talk, to a 
group of intent listeners, about the simple reasonableness of the 
Christian life. 

By and by Eberle said, ‘‘Well, I’ve talked enough.” He turned 
to a young man in a side seat and asked, “What do you think, 
Wilbur, of this idea about religion and a sound mind?” 

The young fellow answered as simply and naturally as he had 
been asked, “It’s the right idea, I see that; but how to do what 
you don’t want to do, even if you know you should; that gets 
me.” 

“Me, too,” said an older man; and one of the young women 
asked, “Isn’t that where the new birth comes in?” 

Peter’s astonishment grew. Why, these people were talking 
as matter-of-factly about religion as they would about any 
other subject whatever! Still, he liked it. And he liked it 
better when Eberle said, “Yes, and Paul knew that. Just there 
conversion does come in. We see the right; we couldn’t see it 
except for all sorts of guidance, now and long ago. We know 
we ought to do it, and that knowledge is another gift of God. 
But how? Why, doing as Jesus did; by using in the most posi¬ 
tive way the power of will God has given us; by burning our 
ships behind us; by choosing as we would in any other great 
moment calling for decision, by betting one’s life, as somebody 
has put it, that Christianity is true, and that it will work.” 

“But does conversion come in there, then?” asked a man 
whom Peter recognized as one of the leading members. “If it 
is all a matter of will, and human choice, where is repentance? 
How does conversion come in?” 

“It comes in right there,” Eberle affirmed. “We are sinners. 
God has said in a thousand ways, outside the Bible as well as in 
it, that forgiveness is not given or held back by caprice; it is 
ours already—for the taking. Some of us have more sense of 
sin than others; some more interest in finding a way of life that 
will satisfy us; some of us are more drawn by the thought of 
Christ as our Saviour. But God is not particular; remember 
how Jesus did it; he just said ‘Come’. Whatever God shows 
us about ourselves and about himself which brings us to the 
great decision, don’t you think that the moment of decision is 
a moment of conversion, of turning, the beginning of a new life? 
And, when we do choose, haven’t we a right to feel a great sense 


74 


SHODDY 


of release, just because, as the hymn says, ‘ Tis done, the great 
transaction’s done?” 

So it went on. There was nothing for Peter to do; whereat 
he was secretly relieved. No exhortation, no altar call, no “per¬ 
sonal work”. 

On the third morning, Eberle said to Peter, “Tonight I want 
you to take the talk. I heard you at Y. M. C. A., last winter 
when you spoke on Tf ye offer the blind for sacrifice,’—that text 
in Malachi, you remember. Give us that; it’s what I want a 
few of these young folks to have.” 

Since Peter could not deny his own work, he had no excuse. 
And the free friendliness of the queer revival made hesitation 
seem foolish. So he spent the afternoon recalling the points of 
his talk, and that night managed a respectable half-hour, with 
Eberle leading off in the discussion of God’s equal right with the 
state to his people’s unblemished loyalty. 

The attendance kept up all week, and on Friday night, after 
Peter’s second attempt at something not exactly preaching, 
Eberle said, “On Sunday we shall celebrate the Lord’s Supper, 
and I’d be glad if those of you who have been making the great 
decision this week will take the Supper with us. Perhaps you’ll 
wish to join the church on probation, too.” 

And Peter never forgot the glowing happiness of that Sunday 
morning, when he saw twenty-four people (they would have 
been “saved sinners,” at Fairdale or anywhere else) come for¬ 
ward resolutely and with evident joy, both to the fellowship of 
the church and to the Supper. 

The sacramental moments gave a keener edge to Peter’s sense 
of discovery. There was something inexpressibly holy and in¬ 
timate in tie hour. For the first time he felt how one could 
come into real if mystic union with Jesus Christ through the 
sharing of a little bread and wane with his fellows. Only the 
time and the place and the people must be fit, as they were this 
morning. 

And there came to him something which was more than a feel¬ 
ing that Eberle and he—though himself in so small a measure 
—had seen some positive gains from their work. He saw what 
nothing else thus far had revealed to him, that a man could be 
a minister of the Gospel without denying or smothering his con¬ 
victions; without accepting the traditional pastoral pattern 
which seemed sufficient for most preachers. 


SHODDY 


75 


VIII 

His chance came sooner than he had expected. The student 
appointment at New Hartford fell vacant, and the Presiding 
Elder, having talked with Eberle, offered the place to Peter; he 
would make arrangements for getting him his local preacher’s 
license at the next quarterly conference. 

It wasn’t much, financially; perhaps three hundred dollars or 
so. Nor was it otherwise promising. Less than a hundred mem¬ 
bers, in a poor suburb of a none too prosperous country town, a 
one-room church of native stone, a non-resident Sunday School 
superintendent, two rival Ladies’ Aid Societies, and two other 
churches, equally poverty-smitten, within two blocks. But it 
would be a good preparation for his admission to conference on 
trial. 

The very insignificance of the charge helped Peter to accept 
it. With all his self-distrust, he felt that failure here would 
be something less than fatal. 

Bartelmy kept on at the store, his money worries all past. He 
made small but comfortable commissions, above his wages, by 
acting as selling agent for goods not to be found in the local 
stores. It was all quite regular, and some weeks his extra in¬ 
come was much as seven dollars. 

Towards the end of the winter term, there was an inter¬ 
society oratorical contest; Bartelmy and two others from Ham¬ 
ilton, Peter and two others from Areopagus. Bartelmy had 
chosen a Civil War theme—it was in the days when “waving 
the bloody shirt” expressed in the slang of the period the par¬ 
tisanship of those who refused to forget the War of the Rebel¬ 
lion,” as the North called it, then only twenty years in the past. 

Bartelmy guessed that his grades on thought and composition 
would be better than fair. He was more doubtful of what he 
might get on delivery. And, at the last moment, the failure of 
one of the appointed judges to appear resulted in the selection, 
as his substitute, of a professional “old soldier”. Bartelmy knew 
the man well, and saw opportunity for making a special im¬ 
pression. Toward the close of his oration he abandoned his 
memorized lines, and plunged into several passionate para¬ 
graphs embodying what he knew were cherished prejudices of 
the substitute judge. As for Peter’s speech, all that is remem¬ 
bered now is that he won second place. 


76 


SHODDY 


Calder’s public functions being the citizenry’s sole source of 
entertainment, even an oratorical contest was not to be de¬ 
spised, and the townspeople to the number of two hundred or 
more were in the audience. A few visitors also might have 
been observed, for always at Calder whoever chanced to be in 
town when a college affair was on must inevitably be taken to 
the chapel. 

Miss Viola Dimont, a music student from Kansas City, had 
come with her lawyer father, a man of affairs, though much 
better known in Kansas and Missouri politics than at the bar. 

Miss Dimont held herself somewhat aloof from the things 
which interested other students, and the only previous notice 
she had taken of Bartelmy Bonafede was to utter a wholly 
baseless surmise, which for a time attained cruel currency, that 
his mother was probably supporting him by her needle. As 
to the contest, it bored her, a fact she made no effort to 
conceal. 

Her father, however, having a sort of professional faith in 
public speech, found the affair mildly amusing. Just once a 
keener interest awoke in him. His practiced eye and ear in¬ 
stantly caught the change from memoriter to extempore in 
Bartelmy’s delivery and he discerned that it was aimed directly 
at Major Curry, the substitute judge. For the lawyer recog¬ 
nized Major Curry as one of those old soldiers who in that 
decade made more or less political capital out of their war rec¬ 
ords, and so he paid to Bartelmy’s calculated adroitness the 
compliment of an expert’s approval. 

Bartelmy won the major—and the medal—and, though Judge 
Dimont had his amused conviction, no one really knew that he 
had introduced new matter into his speech. No one, that, is, 
except Peter Middleton, who had heard the original rehearsed. 
He was only slightly surprised; for a long time he had not felt 
sure about Bart. 

Still he had made up his mind, months ago, that he would 
not break with him if he could help it; but he could not quite 
help asking, the first time they met, “What made you change 
your oration, Bart?” 

Bartelmy was not at a loss for an answer. He had expected 
the question, and had decided that frankness, up to a point, was 
his best reply. 

So he said, with an offhand air, “Oh, it had occurred to me 


SHODDY 


77 


several times that after all there was something to be said for 
those who had fought the war, and Major Curry’s appointment 
as one of the judges reminded me of it again.” 

“Evidently,” said Peter, dryly. 

“So I extemporized a bit. But you don’t think it made any 
difference in the markings, do you?” Bartelmy asked. 

“Well,” said Peter, “since I was one of those you beat, that’s 
no question for me to answer. Anyway, you know better than I 
do. Only I never heard before of a contestant changing his ora¬ 
tion after it had been judged on thought and composition. You 
got grades on two speeches, not on one. That’s your lookout. 
But you won, and I suppose you’d rather be congratulated than 
bother explaining how it happened.” 

But Bartelmy remembered, afterward, that Peter hadn’t con¬ 
gratulated him, and as he thought it over there was an uncom¬ 
fortable touch of double meaning that he didn’t like in Peter’s 
comment. 

IX 

In the beginning of the spring term a student left school, for 
reasons connected with the press of work on the farm, and the 
high price of hired help. His going made a vacancy in the 
choir, to which Professor Wolf invited Bartelmy. With a fairly 
pleasing baritone, and a facility in sight reading traceable to his 
early training in the Tonic Sol Fa, Bartelmy was good material 
for the crabbedly competent instruction of the head of the 
music department, and found the work and its associations 
alike congenial. 

There was also a new soprano in the choir that spring, the 
same Miss Viola Dimont whose father had so shrewdly ap¬ 
praised Bartelmy’s contest oration. This young lady was able 
to wear clothes of a quality and cut well above the Calder level; 
and her consciousness of being properly habited had something 
to do with her obviously metropolitan poise. 

The rehearsals for commencement’s formal public events, 
though not primarily social affairs, had their social side. And 
Bartelmy, with a boldness he could not account for, found him¬ 
self in the intervals of practice engaged in light conversation 
with the proud Miss Dimont. If he did not know why she was 
easy to talk to, she did. She had the advantage of the inside 
position. It was one of the results of the local oratorical contest. 


78 


SHODDY 


Escorting his daughter to her boarding house on that night, 
her father told her, “Young Bonafede is a man to watch. Did 
you see how he aimed one section of his oration straight at 
Major Curry? I wonder if he planned it in advance. Or it may 
have been coincidence. Anyway, it won him the prize. Coin¬ 
cidences of that sort are priceless—and so is the man who can 
make them happen.” 

Hitherto Viola Dimont had not given much thought to her 
father’s reputed keenness as a judge of men, but now she re¬ 
membered that he owed much of his influence with his railway 
clients to this very ability—it was particularly useful when state 
legislatures were in session, and in the quiet work that preceded 
a nominating convention. 

If Andrew J. Dimont thought Bartelmy Bonafede a promis¬ 
ing young man, then he was a promising young man. And as 
such he might be worth cultivating. Hence the graciousness 
of Andrew J. Dimont’s daughter at choir rehearsals. Hence 
much else, in this year when Peter was a senior, Bartelmy a 
junior, and Effie somewhere in the uncharted country of the 
normal department. 

The preacher of Commencement Sunday was perhaps Cal- 
der’s most distinguished alumnus, pastor of a great church in 
Denver, which paid him what was in those days the almost 
fabulous salary of $7000. He was one of that little group of 
Methodist preachers who had gone to conspicuous pulpits in 
other denominations, men whom sect-conscious Methodists were 
beginning to point out as a part of their church’s gift to Pro¬ 
testantism in general; and his reputation as an orator was al¬ 
ready sufficient to make him a decided attraction on Lyceum 
circuits. 

In the ordinary course, the sermon would have been forgotten 
by everybody, as is the fate of most sermons on great occasions. 
No doubt it was so forgotten by nearly everybody else. But 
Bartelmy Bonafede remembered some of it in later years; it was 
his undoing. And Peter;—he never forgot it. 

The preacher found his text in a relatively unfamiliar Scrip¬ 
ture; the story, in Second Kings, of the siege of Samaria. He 
read, by way of introduction, the highly dramatic story of the 
siege, and then he retold it. For some reason Bartelmy was 
keenly attentive. Years afterward, he could recall the main 
points of the outline—and did. 


SHODDY 


79 


In a certain city, said Dr. Paxson, ringed around by enemies, 
and smitten with famine, are these significant people: 

A king; weak, irresolute, petulant, impulsive, unthinking, first 
cousin to King Demos of the present time, weakest when most 
eagerly pretending to be strong; easily flattered; easily fright¬ 
ened; easily cajoled into courses sure to end in disaster; easily 
disheartened into a paralyzed impotence. 

A captain of the king’s army, on whom the king leans. He 
is of the official caste, and he becomes, in times of public com¬ 
motion, the guardian of the city’s peace and its supplies. 

Two women who have been driven by the famine to the final 
denial of their motherhood, the willingness to live on the blood 
of their children. In one of them the mother-instinct tardily 
revolts; but she has herself benefited by the compact of death, 
and she seems even more unlovely than her fellow. 

A prophet who is unpopular. He will not tell pleasant lies, 
nor bow to the ruling ideas of religious customs and public pol¬ 
icy. As to his person he is fairly safe, because in times of ex¬ 
tremity he is more resourceful and surer of himself than the 
professional religionists. He is not of the priestly order, though 
exercising religious functions in irregular fashion. He is looked 
upon by the priests and other ecclesiastics with a jealousy not 
unmixed with fear. They cannot understand why he does not 
conform; they are mystified by his lack of interest in priestly 
affairs. 

Four lepers. They are not in the city, though of it; the city 
has cast them out, and they are huddled at the gate; neither 
city nor enemy gives them any heed. They have nothing to lose 
but life, and life to them presents its least desirable aspect. 
They have already lost most that makes life attractive, and are 
further removed from fear than from hope. But the lepers save 
the city. 

All this, said the preacher, in our own civilization, has its par¬ 
allel today. Beset by moral and spiritual famine and by many 
jealous enemies, is a church. 

The people of the church think themselves fortunate; but in 
many ways they are an aimless, wandering multitude; irreso¬ 
lute, impulsive, unwilling to take and erratic and whimsical in 
bestowing responsibility. 

They have their leaders; some being officials, and others 
prophets. In the good times the functionaries are in control; 


80 


SHODDY 


the prophets are either disregarded or distrusted. In times of 
peril, though the captains never willingly let go, the people turn 
from them to the unofficial men who speak unpopular truth. 

A part of the general population lives on the bloom of child¬ 
hood, ignorantly or greedily sacrificing the future for the pres¬ 
ent. They are impelled to this partly by an unnatural avidity 
(itself a product of the time), and partly by a social blindness 
which keeps them from seeing the consequences of what they 
do. 

Others buy and sell foul and repulsive merchandise which 
the moral famine drives the people to use—debauched art, de¬ 
cadent literature, filthy newspapers, rotten amusements,—and 
grow rich at their beastly traffic. 

In every place there is a group of the disinherited, barely 
existing on the fringes of civilization, with no restraints except 
the fear of bodily pain, with no stake in the general scheme of 
things, no social bond, no possessions except a perpetual hunger, 
and no rights anybody needs to respect. Yet in them are ca¬ 
pacities of unguessed value. 

“There is no time,” said the preacher, “to enlarge on the 
other aspects of the theme, though they clamor for discussion. 
I would have you see this little company of the miserable, with 
no urge to fellowship save their misery. They must not be ig¬ 
nored. You dare not ignore the outcasts of civilization. We 
who are more favored may be responsible for them. And, when 
even his church had disappointed him, the God who could de¬ 
liver a city through four lepers has often delivered an age from 
mental or moral famine through disregarded and discarded folk. 
They who have nothing to lose may need only the stimulus of 
a great unsought, unexpected opportunity, to become pioneers, 
discoverers, deliverers, heroes, with nothing to gain. 

“And if by lepers God can save a city, how much more by 
men and women like you! There is no virtue in handicaps, as 
such, but what an obligation in privilege! You are not lepers; 
who shall deny that some of you are to be prophets? God is 
always saving the world, either by outcasts or by visionaries, 
when practical men have failed.” 

Peter was deeply moved. As he listened his recent reading 
took on new values; he saw Jean Valjean and Sidney Carton 
and Smike and the Marchioness,—he saw the Corn Law suffer¬ 
ers of England, the Negroes of the South, outcasts all, who by 


SHODDY 


81 


their woes had helped to end old famines and old sieges. And 
then he saw the prophets; Bunyan and Wesley and Garrison 
and Wilberforce and John Brown of his own Kansas. 

x 

Peter took only a short vacation at home that summer, stand¬ 
ing by New Hartford through most of the hot weather. He did 
some more thinking about the oratorical contest of the pre¬ 
ceding year. It was not that he cared much about Bartelmy’s 
stratagem; that was just Bartelmy. But he took stock of his 
own work. Though speaking did not come easy to him, he 
understood already that fluency was a mixed blessing. He took 
his oration to pieces; he sought his father’s judgment—the new 
accord between these two was something beautiful to see—and 
he asked himself whether there was gain enough in public con¬ 
tests to justify going into them. When he had decided that 
there was, he began at once to block out a speech for the fall 
contest, which, important for its local signficance, was also a 
tryout for the state contest, whose winner would represent Kan¬ 
sas in the Interstate. 

And Henry Middleton helped him! 

The old man insisted that his own philosophy had not al¬ 
tered, but somehow he could not force himself into any con¬ 
flict with Peter’s by this time acknowledged vocation. He was 
not simply reconciled to the thought of Peter as a preacher; he 
had begun to be proud of it, and was mightily set up when his 
boy was asked to preach at the Sunday evening union service in 
the Odessa Park. 

Odessa people stared; but in his hearing, none of them voiced 
their amaze. And Peter’s sermon, avoiding controversial mat¬ 
ters, was received with a respect and interest with whose genu¬ 
ineness the proudest father could have found no fault. 

Effie took work as an assistant in a group of Teachers’ Insti¬ 
tutes in Central Kansas, and Bartelmy stuck by the store, which 
by this time seemed more his property than Fletcher’s. No 
longer did he need to be anxious about a living; his income 
more than met his expenses. 

Early in the fall, having let it be known that he would not 
enter the local contest, he was elected president of the oratorical 
association. So it was his job to work out, with the executive 


82 SHODDY 

committee, the details; choosing the judges, arranging the pro¬ 
gram and such like. 

And he told Peter, with something of the warmth of the days 
before Calder, “Old man, you know I’ve got to be neutral, offi¬ 
cially, but I want you to win. If you do, we’ll take such a 
crowd to the state contest as Calder never sent before, and 
Girdleville will know we’re there.” 

All of which he honestly meant, and honestly carried out. 
For Peter did get first place on the home contest, and Bartelmy 
at once began preparations for 1 the state event in the winter, to 
which eight colleges would send their winning orator to contend 
for the honor of representing Kansas. It was the big event of 
the winter term. 

Bartelmy worked up an interest which produced his promised 
crowd of Middleton-and-Calder enthusiasts. The train which 
bore the Calder delegation to Girdleville began its journey a few 
stations to the eastward, at the seat of the State University. It 
stopped for Calder’s contingent, and, twenty miles beyond, to 
take on the students from Judson College. 

Sleepy Girdleville was awake for once. Eight colleges had 
poured in on the town a raving, yelling, irresponsible horde. 
There were two hours before the contest would begin, and the 
more timid of the townsfolk kept off the main street. But it 
was a harmless crowd, if a trifle noisy. 

Bartelmy slipped away to the hotel. He knew he would have 
work enough later, if Peter won. So the present was time to 
husband one’s resources. To Bartelmy that meant supper. 

On the other side of the table was a gentleman who looked 
like a man of affairs. He seemed in a somewhat gloomy mood 
just now. While Bartelmy waited for his order, his neighbor 
looked up, and eyed him closely. Then the noise outside sug¬ 
gested a question. 

“I’ve seen you before, I think,” he said. “May I ask if you 
know anything of this rather unusual commotion that occupies 
the town?” 

“Some,” replied Bartelmy appreciatively. “I came with part 
of it.” 

? “From Calder College, didn’t you? I thought that was where 
I’d seen you. Then perhaps you would not mind explaining it?” 
The tone was wholly respectful, as from man to man. 

“Not a bit,” Bartelmy said. “Eight colleges of the state form' 


SHODDY 


83 


an oratorical association, and each college will have its repre¬ 
sentative in a speechifying contest at the opera house tonight. 
These crowds are student delegations come to whoop it up for 
their orators, and of course they all think they’ll be able to crow 
over all the rest when the decision is announced.” 

“You will excuse my curiosity, I hope,” said the stranger, 
paying little heed to Bart’s details of the contest. “How did the 
delegations come?” 

“By special train, mostly. The State University, Judson Col¬ 
lege and Calder—that’s my school, though I don’t see how you 
knew—had a car apiece on one train. We go back the same 
way, after the contest.” 

“You do!” Bartelmy thought this quiet-spoken business man 
was becoming excited over a very ordinary remark. “What 
time do you start?” He asked the question with an emphasis 
that made Bartelmy stare. 

“Well, I don’t supose it will be much before one o’clock in the 
morning. That may be too late to interest you. You’d enjoy 
the contest, though, if you’ve never been to one. The crowd 
is the best part of the show.” 

The stranger had pulled out a couple of railway folders, and 
was studying them intently. “I suppose your specials don’t 
take other passengers?” 

“They might,” said Bartelmy, “if there was a good reason.” 

“There’s reason enough, my boy. Some pretty big things 
might depend on it. My name is Dimont, Andrew J. Dimont. 
I heard you win an oratorical contest at Calder last year. I 
think you know my daughter Viola. She’s spoken of you.” 

“Why of course I know her,” said Bartelmy, flattered. “We 
sing in the choir. We’re pretty good friends, too, you might 
say; and it will be an added pleasure to do you this little favor. 
You see, I’m in charge of Calder’s car, and the car-ticket doesn’t 
say how many passengers we’re to carry. Would a hard seat, 
if any, on the return trip be any accommodation to you?” 

“Accommodation! Well, I should say it would. There’s a 
man coming to see me on the Northwest branch tonight, at mid¬ 
night, and if he and I could get through to Kansas City by 
morning it would mean something bigger than I dare mention. 
The last Kansas City train goes through here at nine-thirty to¬ 
night, and there’s no other until ten tomorrow morning. 

“Now, your special strikes the Sunset Line at Winnebago. 


84 


SHODDY 


The Sunset’s Kansas City Limited goes through there at six 
o’clock tomorrow morning, and gets into Kansas City at eight. 
Don’t you see?” 

Bartelmy saw. “That’s easy,” he said. “You and your friend 
go back with us as far as Winnebago. We’ll be there pretty 
early in the morning, though.” 

“That’s a trifle,” said the other. “You’re doing me a great 
favor. Some big interests of mine are at stake.” 

The Opera House was Babel and pandemonium and Bedlam, 
all three and all at once. Banners flaunted, fish-horns tooted, 
college yell clashed with college yell. One by one the orators 
went through their painful paces. Some were profound, others 
dramatic. One denounced Richard III. Another told the woes 
of the Armenians. One poised himself for a flight over the 
course of time, starting with Adam, and folding his wings just 
this side of the Millenium. 

Peter was clear, direct, almost too easy for the occasion. A 
contest crowd wants action. Of course Calder’s delegation 
yelled itself voiceless. The rest of the audience was not much 
impressed. How could it be? The contest was no more than a 
factional fight, lacking only the fisticuffs. The several orations 
were merely fifteen minute rests between rounds of tumult. 

But the judges liked Peter, and gave him first place. 

Although Calder’s delegation, like every other, had gone to 
the contest vowing that it would bring back first honors or die, 
the actual attainment of the coveted distinction brought an in¬ 
toxication with success that almost spoiled Bartelmy’s promise 
to Mr. Dimont. 

For Bartelmy, as crazy as the rest, had helped shoulder his 
old friend through the streets of Girdleville, and, in due time 
the crowd had made its way down to the train. The State Uni¬ 
versity warriors, already at the station, were sleepy and savage. 
They had expected to capture the contest. Judson College, 
having expected nothing, was sleepy and serene. Calder alone 
was wide awake. The celebration moved en masse into the 
Calder car. The train gave a preliminary lurch. 

Just in time, Bartelmy remembered Mr. Dimont. He made 
for the door of the car, and saw him and another man standing 
uncertainly on the platform. 

“Here you are,” said Bart, “hop aboard. I almost missed 


SHODDY 85 

you, but we’re all a little loony tonight,” and he helped them 
on to the already moving train. 

Babe McClusky stood in the doorway. “Babe,” said Bart, 
“this is Mr. Dimont of Kansas City. He and his friend have to 
get to K. C. in the morning, and there’s no other way except 
around by Winnebago. Help me see they get seats somewhere, 
will you?” 

Babe would; and did. The car was crowded, but nobody 
cared to stick in the same place all night, so that two more pas¬ 
sengers could be accommodated quite easily. 

In the chill dawn of the February morning the special ran 
into Winnebago. Bartelmy hunted up his deadheads. “You’ll 
have time for a cup of coffee across the street,” he said to 
Dimont, “and if the Sunset Limited is on time you should be in 
Kansas City by eight.” 

Dimont was not boisterously demonstrative, but he held Bar- 
telmy’s hand with a grip that young man felt for a week. 

“Bonafede, this is a service I can’t easily reward, but I hope 
I can’t forget it, either. You’ll hear from me later. Goodby.” 

XI 

No expectations of special reward disturbed Bartelmy’s 
thoughts; he had long ago lost his belief in fairies, and his day 
dreams in the bookstore were of practical affa ; rs. 

He was genuinely surprised, therefore, when Viola Dimont 
sought him out one day and delivered a message from her 
father and mother, inviting him to spend the Easter week-end 
at their home in Kansas City. Viola made it quite clear that 
the invitation was wholly her father’s doing. 

“You know,” she said, “Dad is terribly taken with you since 
the state contest; thinks you have initiative and resourcefulness 
and a lot of other business qualities that I never noticed in you. 
And yet he’s only seen you twice. Father is funny; but he’s 
not usually so romantic.” 

Bartelmy saw nothing romantic in the invitation; and, in¬ 
deed, once he had accepted it, suffered a growing uneasiness 
which blurred his usual clear vision of personal profit. The ad¬ 
venture would open new worlds, certainly; worlds of which he 
had always known, but never from the inside. Could he rise to 
their demands? Not since the Thornlea days had he so much as 


86 


SHODDY 


seen the inside of a “gentleman’s” house, and then he had gone 
by the back way, to the kitchen. 

In the early stages of his Kansas City visit Mr. Dimont em¬ 
barrassed Bartelmy. He told and retold the story of his mid¬ 
night ride on the contest train from Girdleville. The family 
was plainly familiar with its every incident, but Bartelmy’s 
presence in the house gave his host sufficient excuse for its repe¬ 
tition. The tale had a personal touch, too. “You did yourself 
a service that night, young man, as well as doing one for me. 
You didn’t know it, but some day you will.” 

After his first confusions, Bartelmy found himself quite at 
ease in the Dimont establishment. None but Viola put on any 
airs, and he had learned at Calder how to discount that sort 
of thing. Her parents made no pretensions of any sort. In 
Thornlea Mrs. Dimont would have been described, wholly to 
her credit, as a “homely body”—one who had no concerns out¬ 
side her home and her family. She managed her colored ser¬ 
vants by sheer good humor, and indeed, strongly reminded Bar¬ 
telmy of the kindly cook at Jessop’s in Thornlea long ago, who 
one hungry night had given him bread and butter overspread 
with marmalade. 

“Judge” Dimont had met snobbery at too close quarters to 
practice it himself. He was a railroad lawyer of the variety 
which had a few conspicuous examples in the Mississippi Valley 
before the days of the Interstate Commerce Commission. He 
attended to the political business of his employers. He made 
and unmade legislators. He saw to it that the right people in 
the right communities received passes and other favors. He had 
his lieutenants in Jefferson City and Topeka, and in every im¬ 
portant county seat. Some of these were members of his well- 
organized secret service; others openly championed the rail¬ 
roads and their interests. 

The Judge said no more about benefits to come. But he had 
said enough so that Bartelmy found himself wondering when 
his reward would arrive, and how. 

He returned to Calder on an earlier train than Viola, for the 
bookstore would need him. And he continued to think of the 
Judge. He saw that this lawyer seemed to be something of a 
personage in Kansas City, as in truth he was, and not in Kan¬ 
sas City only, but in all the territory whose railroads converged 


SHODDY 


87 


there. Hence he was a man whose influence was to be accepted, 
and to be developed as opportunity offered. 

Before Viola left home, a remark of her father’s found her in 
more receptive mind than she realized. 

“That Bonafede boy,” he said at lunch, “is nobody’s fool. 
The only times I’ve seen him in action he got results, and he 
got the results he was after. If he does go into the Methodist 
ministry, he’ll not stop short of being a bishop. He tells me he’s 
engaged. Well; the girl he marries is sure of sharing in a career 
of some sort. Do you know her?” 

“Why, yes, I suppose I do,” said Viola, “though not very 
well. She’s a girl he knew before he came to Calder. She’s a 
teacher, taking Normal; not much style to her. Never is, with 
those Normal girls. She certainly doesn’t look cut out for a 
bishop’s wife.” 

“Well,” the Judge insisted, “that’s where he’s headed, though 
he doesn’t know it yet; which maybe is just as well.” 

XII 

Calder-bound that afternoon, Viola fell to thinking of the 
talk. “A bishop’s wife;”—the phrase sounded important. What 
would being a bishop’s wife mean? And how long did it take 
for a young preacher to become a bishop? 

She decided to be a bit more approachable. If her father 
was right, as he so often was, she was the only girl at Calder 
who had any suspicion of Bartelmy’s future; and that might be 
an advantage. 

In the weeks before commencement she was cordial enough 
so that Bart found it increasingly easy to drop in at her board¬ 
ing house; first to talk reminiscently of the Easter visit, and, 
later, with little concern over having any excuse whatever. As 
the spring advanced, a short stroll now and then was no more 
than natural, with longer ones by and by, in the longer twi¬ 
lights. At Calder walking had its conventions and its implica¬ 
tions; it was a declaration of interest, with a code and customs 
well understood. 

And, even if it had been meaningless, a student cannot be in 
two places at once. By as much as Bartelmy began to culti¬ 
vate Viola, by so much he must seem to neglect Effie. Because 
of the code, and because of the narrow circle in which all Cal- 


88 


SHODDY 


der moved, the fact could not be hidden. First Effie knew; and 
kept her own counsel. Soon everybody knew, except perhaps 
Peter Middleton. Peter’s charge forced him to concentrate on 
his studies through the week, and he was probably the last 
person of all to discover what was going on. 

He met Effie between classes one morning, and said to her, 
“I’ve a letter from Retha I’d like to show you. Will you be 
visible to ordinary callers tonight, or is Bart coming?” 

“Bart is not coming,” she said. She dared not let him see the 
hurt in her eyes, and paused for a moment. 

“Funny,” he thought, “maybe she’d rather not have me 
come, anyway.” And he spoke up; “Don’t bother, Effie; if 
you’ve something else on I can come some other time.” 

But by this time she had regained her composure, and said— 
“like the Effie she used to be”, he told himself—“Don’t be fool¬ 
ish, Peter. Of course come on over; I’ll be glad to see Retha’s 
letter; and I’ve nothing else on. You keep yourself a lot too 
busy with that church of yours, and your friends ought to be 
glad of any chance to help you forget it once in a while. So 
come over tonight.” 

It was just a pleasant call, and Peter suspected nothing; but 
there was a reference in the letter he had brought which re¬ 
quired a second talk with Effie. Again Bart was no hindrance; 
and this time Peter, with a touch of the old familiarity, wanted 
to know. 

Effie was not the girl to tell him, but he found others who 
had no scruples. Their information made him more inquisitive 
than he had any business to be, but he told himself that this 
was an unusual affair. 

Bart and Peter met but seldom; they saw each other now 
and then between class hours as they passed on the campus 
paths, but the comradeship of their first year had long ago 
ceased. So of course Peter would ask no questions of Bart. 

Soon he had two facts that seemed to have some relation to 
each other; Bartelmy was noticeably attentive to Viola Dimont, 
and he had spent the Easter vacation as a guest in her home. 

Peter had not been on the contest special, returning from the 
State contest. He had gone up to the farm over Sunday, tak¬ 
ing an earlier train on the main line to the junction point for 
Odessa; the very junction, by the way, where Bartelmy had 


SHODDY 


89 


spent his first night in Kansas, before that winter day when he 
and Peter met in the Middleton barnyard. 

But Peter had heard vague gossip about the two Kansas City 
men who had travelled in the Calder car from Girdleville to 
Winnebago. Bartelmy’s Kansas City holiday suggested a pos¬ 
sible connection, and surmise became certainty after he had 
sought out Babe McClusky, who had no reason on earth for not 
telling what he knew. Babe remembered the name of one of 
the strangers; “Dimont it was,” he said. “I guess he must be 
some kin to Viola Dimont. She lives in Kansas City, you 
know.” 

The thing began to clear. In some way Bartelmy had struck 
up acquaintance with Judge Dimont; and now the Dimonts 
were taking him up. 

Because he knew Bartelmy, Peter could almost reconstruct 
the sequence of events. He was torn between hope and disgust. 
In some moments he would gladly have given Bartelmy a 
thrashing; in the next, he told himself that Bartelmy would have 
his reward, and that his own fortunes might best be served by 
letting him alone. 

Effie was a puzzle. In the last few months he had honestly 
tried to put her out of his life, and for his pains he had been 
rebuked, as soon as he began to call, for acting so unlike his old 
self. 

And yet, she was finding him every day more like the Peter 
who had seemed so wonderful in her first Kansas days. She 
was deeply glad over their renewed association; it was good to 
have a friend, almost like a brother, in this time when Bartelmy 
was behaving so strangely. 

Peter would not ask her again about Bartelmy, and she tried 
to hide whatever she felt by talking of him as freely as before. 
It was a poor pretense, though Peter felt forced to play up to 
it, and did, as long as he could. But the time came when he 
got out of bounds. 

“What’s Bart’s plan for the summer?” he asked her quite 
casually one afternoon, as they met at the library door and 
walked away together. 

Effie hesitated. Peter’s quick sidewise glance caught a look 
of trouble, and her color had risen. At last she said, “I 
really don’t know. I haven’t—” and stopped. 

“You haven’t seen him in weeks?” he burst out. “I know you 


90 


SHODDY 


haven’t. And I’d like to skin him alive. But Effie,” and some¬ 
thing suddenly cooled the anger in his voice, “do you care? If 
you do, I’ll go to Bart and put the fear of the Lord into him. 
But if you really don’t care whether he behaves like a skunk—” 

She put her hand on his arm. “I can takent from you, Peter, 
because you’re Peter; nobody else could talk to me like that, 
and it’s a good deal to stand, even from you. Bartelmy is 
busy with many things, and if he is to have the fear of the Lord 
put into him, it will not be by you. It isn’t your affair.” 

Peter stared. This was not the girl he had just caught blush¬ 
ing in shamed confusion because she had betrayed her hurt 
pride. But neither was it the Effie of the days before Calder, 
when she had been the friendliest girl of all the countryside. 

“Well,” he said, “maybe not. Anyway, I know what he’s up 
to. He may be busy, but he has time to spare for Viola 
Dimont, and I know why.” 

“Do you?” Effie said in a thin, hard voice. “Do you?” She 
was trying to be dignified; but because, as she had said, Peter 
was Peter, the effort was not much of a success, and her voice 
lost all its hardness as she looked into his face and said, “Oh, 
Peter, I wish I did!” 

The sight of her brave eyes, forbidden of her will to release 
the insistent tears, put an end to all Peter’s discretion. Few 
people were on the campus, and none at all near by. He stopped 
and faced her. “Effie Bailey,” he said, “apart from the fact 
that he’s behaved to you like a cad, do you really in your heart 
care whether or not Bartelmy Bonafede goes where he thinks 
he can prosper his fortunes?” 

Effie had recovered her wits, and with them her mood of suffi¬ 
ciency. “Why shouldn’t I care, Peter? You are my friend, in 
spite of a shocking way you have of minding other people’s busi¬ 
ness, and I can be frank with you. Bartelmy is a worry to me. 
He’s his own worst enemy, too. But if he gives me no chance 
to tell him so,—I’m not sure I should if he did—well, I’ve a 
certain amount of self-respect, and a girl who takes that sort 
of treatment from the man she’s supposed to be engaged to is 
in for a hard time. Of course I care.” 

Again Peter stared in wondering puzzlement. Effie was ad¬ 
mitting that her pride had been touched, as well she might; but 
with all her frankness she had not said anything about any 
more serious hurt. Was there any? But before he could think 


SHODDY 91 

of a way to make that question sound natural, Effie held out 
her hand. 

“Peter, you’re a dear, good, stupid boy,” she said, “and I 
love you for what you mean, if not for what you do. But 
please let me go now. I have a good deal of work on hand.” 
And she turned down a side path and hurried away. 

Because Effie had virtually forbidden him to interfere, Peter 
in the next few days was more careful than usual to avoid Bar- 
telmy. Bartelmy was even less anxious to meet Peter, though 
his chief anxiety was how to deal with Effie. By this time he 
was sure where his interest lay; all the signs pointed to Viola 
Dimont, to say nothing of her wealth, as he considered it, and 
her influential father. Putting this and that together, he had 
discovered that Judge Dimont, though not a communicant, was 
a trustee of one of Kansas City’s largest churches, and could 
bring things to pass in other churches also, whenever the effort 
seemed worth the trouble. 

When the moment came, the break with Effie was easier than 
he hoped. Certainly, she helped him. In the hall after a joint 
Hamilton-Euterpean function one Saturday night, Effie, deter¬ 
mined at last to have an understanding, pocketed her pride and 
went up to him. 

“Bart, won’t you drop in tomorrow night after Church? I’ll 
have some refreshments ready.” 

Taken unaware, he hesitated. She saw his indecision; and all 
was over. 

“Never mind, Bart,” she said quietly. “I understand. You 
will be otherwise occupied, of course.” 

The taunt stung him, but Bartelmy Bonafede could not often 
afford to be angry; assuredly not now. Something better offered 
—a way out of his difficulty. 

“Effie,” he said, “never mind about me. I could explain if 
you really wanted me to. But you’ve been seeing Peter a good 
deal lately, and I can guess what he thinks. Maybe you are 
finding that you care more for him than you do for me? It 
would not be strange. And why should I stand in your way; 
or his?” 

Effie’s amazed indignation almost choked her. “Why, Bar¬ 
telmy Bonafede! Why, Bartelmy Bonafede!” Then swiftly 
she saw what he was really doing, and a strange surge of relief 


92 SHODDY 

went over her, and drowned out all her anger. She laughed in 
his face. 

“Bart, my friend, you put it the wrong way to, and you 
know it. But it is just as well. What you really want to know 
is why I should stand in your way, though you haven’t been 
much hindered, from what I hear.” And then, taking him a 
little further out of earshot of passers-by, she said, “Bartelmy, 
boy, I’ve always understood you better than you understand 
yourself. You’ll succeed with Viola.” 

And Bartelmy, though he too felt that a great strain was re¬ 
laxed, still followed his own mind, not hers. “ I should have 
realized long ago,” he admitted, “that you and Peter were made 
for one another. But I’ll stand aside now. Never mind what 
becomes of me. I want you to be happy in your own way.” 

“And you in yours?” Effie could not help interjecting. 

“I should have seen it before,” he reiterated; “but it is not 
too late.” 

Effie’s hands went out in a gesture of helplessness. “Have it 
as you will. You couldn’t possibly have seen it much before 
Easter, you know. But if you see it now, we can agree on 
that point, anyway. And,” rather lamely for her, “we can still 
be friends.” 

Bartelmy could scarcely believe it had been all so simply 
done, but there was an uncontrollable relief in his voice. 
“Friends!” he almost gasped, “I should think so. Why, Effie—” 
but she cut him short with a cool, expressionless smile and a 
“Good night,” that saved him from more inventive effort. He 
had never been quite able to match her in swift adjustment to 
new circumstances. 

In the morning, however, he had regained some of his poise, 
and felt that by immediate action he could acquire much- 
needed merit with Peter. So he wrote a note, and took it to 
Peter’s room at an hour when he knew the place would be ten¬ 
antless. 

“Dear Peter,” it ran, “I’m not quite up to talking about it 
yet, but I’ve found out—I’d rather not say how—that Effie’s 
feelings toward me have changed. I can’t bring myself to insist 
on explanation, but neither can I ask her to continue a relation¬ 
ship which has become distasteful. I wanted you to know right 
away, because we three are old friends.” 

It was Peter instead of Bartelmy who that Sunday night 


SHODDY 


93 


enjoyed the refreshments which Effie spread in the parlor of 
her boarding house. Peter, with the obtuseness of the male, 
had taken the facts, if not the inferences, of Bartelmy’s note 
at their face value, and supposed the rest would be easy. He 
had omitted to reckon with Effie, not reflecting that she might 
be unwilling to seem the submissive and unquestioning prize 
in any sort of contest between Bartelmy and himself. 

“Bartelmy tells me,” he said, “that you’ve thrown him over. 
I know what he means, all right; and I won’t lie and say I’m 
sorry. You know I’m not.” 

Effie looked her most distant. “I’d rather discuss something 
else,” she answered. “Can’t you and Bartelmy think of any¬ 
thing better than me to talk about?” 

“I haven’t seen him,” Peter said. “He sent me a note.” 

“Or anything better to write about?” Effie persisted. 

So it befell that, though Bartelmy’s note had ended one un¬ 
certainty, Peter went home no wiser about the other. 

Within a few days, after she had put him properly in his 
place, so that he behaved as a suppliant should, Effie permitted 
him to prosecute his suit according to the immemorial rites. 
And their little affair, one of the many affairs of any spring 
term, at Calder, went on its appointed way quite as auspiciously 
as any. 


XIII 

A new president was Calder’s special attraction of that year’s 
commencement. Dr. McBean, grown old and gray in the 
school’s service, had been for months steadily failing; in fact, 
ever since he had worked so hard on the big deficit. Midway 
of the year he resigned, asking to be released at commencement. 

After the usual search, some of it openly pursued, and some 
carried on through those hidden intricacies of the ecclesiastical 
system which are the delight of the Methodist adept and the 
despair of the outsider, a new man had been found. He was 
in all ways a contrast to the scholarly, rather grim and cere¬ 
moniously courteous McBean; a preacher with a business head 
and a brusque manner; one of the earliest of the high-pressure 
promoter type which has since been so much sought after. 

His inauguration gave commencement week a new distinction. 
The proceedings were as stately and formal as Kansas could 


94 


SHODDY 


compass. Again Bartelmy sat with the choir, behind the new 
president and the other dignitaries, just where he had sat the 
year before when Paxson of Denver had preached on the siege 
of Samaria. He watched his new president intently. Here was 
another of those successful men whom he might hope to emu¬ 
late; a man who got results. 

The inaugural address, though after the first ten minutes 
Bartelmy disregarded its substance, fired afresh all his ambi¬ 
tions. He felt that this man, despite his prominence, was be¬ 
yond him in degree only; his was a goal whose path he could 
see clearly all the way. And Bartelmy Bonafede, in a rush of 
exultant self-confidence, said to himself, “Give me ten years, 
and I’ll stand level with where he is today.” 

Peter could have been fairly happy over his graduation, even 
without the two incidents which made it unforgettable. But 
when his father and mother turned up unannounced, he had 
but one thing more to ask of the kindly fates. 

Henry Middleton in his capitulation held nothing back. 

“My boy,” he said, in his only reference to the old disagree¬ 
ment, “I have learned something from my books, but I have 
been to school to you these last four years. Don’t be surprised 
if I have learned something there, too. You can’t expect me to 
go back on some of my old opinions, but there are others I have 
put away for good. And one of them is about your religion 
of Jesus. I can find it in my mind now to be glad that you will 
be a preacher, because I think I know what sort of a preacher 
you mean to be. God bless you, Peter!” Which was the long¬ 
est and completest and most religious confession the old man 
had made since that far day when, a child, he had been con¬ 
firmed according to the Lutheran rite. 

And then there was Effie. Most of all there was Effie. 

As for the one thing Peter wanted above every other to hear 
her say, it was not said. But, discourage himself as he would, 
he could not deny that something had happened at the end of 
their long walk in the afternoon and the deepening dusk of 
Commencement Day. 

The public fuss was all over. The students and visitors were 
gone. On the morrow Effie would start for her first Institute, 
and Peter would go to his charge. 

He was counting on this being the most important of inter¬ 
views. They retraced their steps over all the old familiar creak- 


SHODDY 


95 


ing wooden walks; they stopped at all the convenient stopping 
places. Yet nothing seemed to come of it. Only a sort of quiet 
poise was on them both as they walked. 

She would not let him talk about love, though he tried, man¬ 
fully. It was hard for her to forget how nearly she had thrown 
away her own gift for loving. But about his future—that she 
insisted on sketching; the details varying from moment to mo¬ 
ment, but the main point never. He must go to a theological 
seminary as soon as possible. He must get all the equipment 
he could. And then he must set out on a career of unselfish 
and successful service. 

“You are not to be a spectacular preacher, Peter,” she said, 
“but a preacher trusted and loved because you will be honest 
and frank and gentle. You will treat your people all your days 
as you treat your New Hartford folks. And see what they 
think of you!” 

Which was true enough; as the presiding elder himself was 
voluble witness; and all the more because Peter was not highly 
impressive in the pulpit. But this particular elder declared that 
he had never before met, in a “supply” from college, such an 
old, wise head, so steady, so dependable and so depended on. 
Not so long ago New Hartford had been the hard place of his 
district; now he knew that it would give him no more trouble, 
at least until Peter was appointed elsewhere. 

Peter was not thinking, just then, of his future. He could 
not be displeased with Effie’s way of forecasting it, but the 
pleasure came wholly from her glowing absorption in the pic¬ 
ture; you might almost think she was ordering this future of 
his from some familiar spirit who had no choice but to obey 
her. 

And so the thing he did say when the last moment came was 
almost as great a surprise to himself as to her. 

They had reached her gate. No, he must not come in, she 
said. It had been a long and exciting day, and they must both 
get some rest. 

“Now, Peter,” she said, as he took her hand, “you’ve said 
you w T on’t think you are through school just because you are 
through college. You’ll think of the next thing, the seminary. 
Well; what can you gain by waiting? Why shouldn’t you go 
right away; this fall?” 

Up to that moment going to seminary in the fall had been of 


96 SHODDY 

all plans the one he had not been considering. But her words 
touched off something. 

“I don’t know,” he said; “maybe I*could. I haven’t thought 
of it as being quite so urgent as that.” And then, the inspira¬ 
tion! “But, Effie, Effie,—if I should—would you go with me?” 

What happened in the next moment was over almost before 
it began, but no imp of doubt could ever make him disbelieve 
it. There in the soft darkness, her hand in his, she stood as 
poised for flight, like a frightened bird. She lifted her head to 
his, and then—and then she was gone. 

But, in the instant of going she had said, “Oh, Peter!” Had 
she meant to kiss him? At least, their lips had touched and 
then she was slipping through the open door like a shadow of 
the night, while Peter followed her not with eyes only, but with 
his very soul. 


xrv 

From Hastings, the seat of the Institute where Effie was be¬ 
ginning a month’s work as teacher of teachers who had even 
less equipment and experience than her own, she wrote Peter 
a somewhat cryptic letter. “I hope you’ll not think I was bold 
the other night. But I couldn’t help it. You are so depend¬ 
able and so easy to understand. It is not quite as easy for me 
to understand myself. But if you are willing to run over to 
Hastings, Friday of next week, we can have a good talk. In the 
meantime there are some things I’ve got to think out for my¬ 
self.” 

With which Peter was as satisfied as a man can be who must 
wait a week before his half-proposal and the girl’s acceptance 
can be completed—as, like any fatuous lover, he felt sure it 
would be. 

But the next Sunday he preached most disconnectedly, and 
seemed to the New Hartford people more than ever the incom¬ 
prehensible Peter whom they loved just for that. 

A Kansas institute boarding house of the early nineties was 
not arranged for such business as Effie and Peter had in hand. 
So she had written him that she would meet the evening train 
where it stopped at the Santa Fe Crossing, and they could have 
supper and then walk about for an hour or so before he went 
to the town’s one hotel. 


SHODDY 


97 


Peter, as the train neared Hastings, was saying to himself, 
“I can figure it all out except what to do in the first minute 
after the train stops. If only we were actually engaged, I’d 
know what to do then, too.” 

When the train did stop, and he saw Effie coming toward 
him, he did it. So did she. She was so radiant and yet so self- 
possessed that more than one passenger who saw them go to 
each others’ arms said, half-enviously, half-cynically, “Very 
pretty; bride meeting her husband after his first absence from 
home since the wedding.” 

They had a supper of some sort—neither knew just what— 
at the railroad restaurant. Just across the track was the Chau¬ 
tauqua park; and as they left the restaurant and turned into 
the gate Effie felt that first of all she must explain her demon¬ 
strative behaviour. 

“Peter, dear,” she said, “ I wrote you last week that I was 
sure of you. But I had to have a session with myself. It took 
me a little while to see through some things that happened 
back on Paint Creek; but everything is clear enough now. I 
misunderstood; and so did you. It wasn’t our fault, and we 
know whose doing it was; but I’m not in the mood to blame 
anybody. So that’s why I was so silly when I saw you getting 
off the car.” 

Said Peter, “Let’s be silly again, both of us.” 

By and by, slowly returning to town, they were talking about 
the coming fall and its plans. 

“I have a little money saved,” said Peter, “and Dad has told 
me that I can have what more I need, up to a certain point. It 
is to be charged against the forty acres he always intended to 
give me when I settled down. But can you get ready, Effie?” 

“Well, it’s shorter notice than most girls ask for,” said Effie, 
“but I’m not going home to be married, so there needn’t be any 
great fuss. How much time can I have?” 

“I’d take you back with me to New Hartford tomorrow if 
I could have my way,” Peter said with unnecessary emphasis, 
“but that wouldn’t be fair. You’ve been rushed a good deal as 
it is. Then I’ve got to put myself right with the charge, and 
give the presiding elder time to find another man. Besides, 
there’s the seminary to consider; where to go, and all that. We 
ought to start east by the middle of September, I should guess. 


98 SHODDY 

By the way, young lady, have you any choice in theological 
schools ?” 

The idea pleased them both immensely. They were prepared 
to be pleased at almost anything. Still, Effie was not entirely 
ignorant. She knew that, east of Kansas, there were three great 
centers for the training of Methodist preachers; one in Boston, 
one in New Jersey, and one in Chicago or near by. Peter’s 
knowledge was scarcely more extensive. Both had heard about 
the Chicago school from Calder men who were there. And 
Chicago had always attracted him. New York and Boston by 
contrast seemed remote; almost alien. He felt that he could 
understand Chicago. 

Said Effie, “I’d love Chicago, too. New York doesn’t scare 
me; I know it, but I don’t like it much. Chicago isn’t really 
western, of course, after Kansas. But it faces the West. And 
I’m a western woman by adoption, you know.” 

So Chicago it was to be. Peter, back in New Hartford on 
the morrow, began the process of prying himself loose, and 
wrote to Evanston for information. 

xv 

Bartelmy, who had nowhere else to go, meant to stay on 
through the summer at the bookstore. He had become virtually 
its manager, and in sole charge, Mr. Fletcher having lost his 
health entirely. Then, before Bartelmy had warning enough 
to think of the event’s relation to his own future, the old mer¬ 
chant died. Directly after the funeral the family decided to 
sell the store to an aggressive young fellow from St. Louis, who 
told Bartelmy, before returning to St. Louis to close up his af¬ 
fairs there, that the store would have to get along for a while 
with the services of one man only—its owner. 

Once more the old fear took him. He had been so comfort¬ 
able—and so sure. Within a year or so he would have been 
beyond all danger of being hurt by a thing like this. But now, 
in a moment almost, he was plunged into the uncertainty 
which as a child in Thornlea he had seen make cowards of the 
strong, and blockheads of the wise. 

Now, as always, the emergency drove him to the first visible 
way of escape. He thought a little of Judge Dimont, but de¬ 
cided it would be impolitic to apply just now for help in that 


SHODDY 


99 


quarter. He thought of Peter, knowing him to be happy in his 
work, and having some success with it. And it occurred to him, 
“If I’m to be a preacher, why not begin now? There’s a living 
in it, and it seems easy. I wonder if there’s an opening any¬ 
where?” 

At once he wrote to three of the presiding elders whom he 
had known in their occasional visits to Calder, and one of 
them answered favorably. Yes; he had a circuit of three 
points, whose pastor had left to take a charge in Nebraska. It 
would not pay enough for a married man, but a student could 
manage very well. 

Bartelmy had received his local preacher’s license some 
months before, and, the elder said, if he should take the Spring 
Valley work he could come up the next spring for admission 
into the conference on trial. 

To Bartelmy the opening was quite good enough. His one 
urgency was to get into assured employment of some sort or 
other, and so be rid of the choking panic which gripped him 
when he thought of himself as being adrift. He could not af¬ 
ford to be choicy. 

By this time it was midsummer. Bartelmy paid a hurried 
visit to Viola in Kansas City, and told her, with justifiable re¬ 
luctance, of the change in his affairs. 

She made no effort to hide her displeasure. “Bartelmy Bona- 
fede,” she said, “whatever made you do it? What was the 
hurry?” 

He could not tell her that. Nobody could be made to realize 
what he had gone through; Viola least of all. It would seem 
a nightmare’s unreal terrors, that vanish in the telling. And, 
while he was ashamed of the fear which had driven him, he had 
been helpless before it. But Viola simply couldn’t understand. 
So she must not know. Besides, he had thought of an ex¬ 
planation which seemed to him quite plausible, even praise¬ 
worthy. 

“You see, Viola,” he began, “I’ve realized lately that the 
store was keeping me from making a beginning at my real life- 
work, and when Mr. Fletcher’s heirs sold out it seemed like a 
providential indication. There was this opening on the Spring 
Valley circuit, and—well, I just took it. It’s not much, but it 
gets me started.” 

“But—Spring Valley circuit! Why couldn’t you wait until 


100 


SHODDY 


something decent offered? You must know what a circuit 
preacher’s life is. I’m surprised at you, and disappointed, too.” 

“You mustn’t be,” he urged. “I do know what it means. 
But the presiding elder says it will only be until spring, and 
will make possible my joining the conference then. That will 
save more than half a year. There are always good openings 
for one or two Calder seniors every spring. Spring Valley is 
just a stepping stone, that’s all. And, when I get the new 
place—” He looked the question he could not put into words. 

“Time enough for that when you’re sure of a new place,” 
Viola said shortly. “But don’t expect me to become interested 
in Spring Valley. I’ll find somebody else to play with on Sun¬ 
days while you’re out among the cornstalks.” 

With which ultimatum Bartelmy was perforce content. It 
showed him what was expected of him, and he did not falter. 
After college opened, and all through the year, he was Viola’s 
constant slave from Monday to Friday. Spring Valley was a 
bad second in his schedule, and his studies came last of all; 
he narrowly missed failure in two of the Fall term exams. 

A few books of outlines served as his chief dependence for 
his Sunday work. One sermon a week was all he needed, and 
his feeling for a flowing and somewhat vivid English gave him 
a measure of dexterity in handling the dry bones of the bor¬ 
rowed outlines. Most of his hearers, uncritical and often un¬ 
heeding, saw nothing out of the way in this strawy sermoniz¬ 
ing, though one or two had discernment enough to recognize it 
for the second-hand stuff it was. 

In the spring Bartelmy was admitted to the conference as a 
probationer, and appointed to Brewster. Naturally, he was 
not to be on the ground much until after commencement, but 
the Brewster church readily agreed to that; the people had 
been given to understand that, as soon as he graduated, Brother 
Bonafede would go to Kansas City and return with his bride, 
the only daughter of a great city lawyer, Judge Dimont. With 
an event like that in prospect, more important churches than 
Brewster have bravely endured a little temporary irregularity 
of pastoral service. 


CHAPTER V 


I 

There had been a wedding in Paint Creek Valley, with the 
Middletons and the Albrights and a few neighbors as the only 
guests. Not even the Fairchilds from Wolf Creek were in¬ 
cluded. Effie had long ago decided that her Wolf Creek rela¬ 
tives were more kin than kind, and had been quite as ready as 
they to ignore the blood-tie. 

In Evanston by mid-September, the Middletons were estab¬ 
lished in a third-story makeshift of two rooms on the wrong 
side of Sherman Avenue. Garrett’s unmarried students had 
for their housing a huge barracks on the campus. The married 
ones were considered to have committed, if not a crime, a most 
regrettable blunder, which they expiated in the torments of 
such quarters as no other self-respecting dwellers in that ex¬ 
acting suburb of Chicago would occupy. 

The student appointment of the second year turned out to 
be a little church in an unpretentious suburb of Chicago; its 
membership made up of workers in half-a-dozen small factor¬ 
ies, mills and machine shops, with a sprinkling of young folks 
who had office jobs in the Loop. 

Peter’s preaching would have been less effective in almost 
any other church. Most of his people were newcomers in that 
part of Chicago, of many diverse religious traditions. Two- 
thirds of them were Methodists by the accident of propinquity, 
no more; if the little church had been five blocks from where 
it was they might easily have been Presbyterians. Afterwards, 
when Peter’s unconventional sermons and the alluring human¬ 
ness of the parsonage began to bear fruit, the recruits whom 
these things attracted were even more hopelessly incapable of 
labeling than the original membership. Towards the end of his 
pastorate one of Peter’s classmates, visiting him over Sunday, 
said, “Old man, I think you must have borrowed members from 
every known faith and order except the Jews and the African 
Methodists.” 


101 


102 


SHODDY 


And Peter assured him, “We have three African Methodists 
in the Sunday School, and our soprano in the choir is Mrs. 
Levy Rosenfeld. She hasn’t joined the church yet, but she 
gave us our last Christmas turkey.” 

The peculiarity of Peter’s work in the pulpit was that he 
couldn’t—or wouldn’t—do it according to rule. If he had 
been at all inclined to rigidity in public worship, this particular 
church would probably have discouraged him. Since he him¬ 
self was anything but a formalist, he found it easy at Colton 
Park to practice a reverence which gave large latitude for the 
demands of the moment. He would not let any form, however 
venerable, quench the spirit of fellowship with God and one 
another, or govern the conditions of his pulpit work. There 
was one exception. Already he felt unrealized values in the 
Communion Service, and he sought always to magnify it. 

Through the last two years at Garrett, the Middletons stayed 
on at Colton Park. Whenever anybody would suggest, how¬ 
ever, that they remain after Peter’s graduation, they had a 
little ceremony. As soon as they were alone the two of them 
would recite antiphonally their well-defined conviction for the 
first pastorate after school. It took this form: 

Peter: “This conference is full of men who came out of the 
seminary and for various reasons are working right at its 
door.” 

Effie: “And if the seminary is really to serve the church, its 
graduates should be scattered where they are most needed.” 

Peter: “Therefore the Middletons have decided to scatter.” 

Effie: “Which means that if two churches or two presiding 
elders or two bishops beckon to us, the one who beckons from 
the point farthest away from any seminary gets us.” 

Peter: “So mote it be;” and, with a silly little exchange of 
kisses the antiphon was ended. 

Just before the conference which would end Peter and Effie’s 
tacit contract with themselves and Colton Park, the presiding 
elder was in the parsonage front room, and Effie, happier than 
usual, even for her, sang as she finished up the supper work in 
the kitchen. The elder would take the nine o’clock train for 
the seat of conference, two hours to the westward. Peter wasn’t 
going. 

Peter lowered his voice as he drew his chair closer to the 
elder. He had news to communicate. 


SHODDY 


103 


“I doubt if I get to conference this year, Dr. Clitheroe,” he 
said. “We’re expecting a world-shaking event in the next few 
days, and I’d sorter like to be on hand.” 

“Is that so? Well, I’m delighted. You must stay, by all 
means, my boy,” said the elder heartily. “Conference will get 
along without you. Anyhow, you know what you’re headed for 
as soon as Mrs. Middleton is ready to travel.” 

“Yes,” Peter agreed. “I heard from the presiding elder out 
there and I guess we’re as good as appointed to that Colorado 
church. My reports have all gone in to the conference, and 
after next Sunday you can send your new man along as soon 
as you like.” 

“He’ll not have an easy time,” said Dr. Clitheroe, as he said 
gpod night. 

While Peter’s elder and the other elders of the cabinet were 
settling themselves in a hotel room that night for a midnight 
palaver with Peter and his cares forgot, Peter himself had never 
been more miserable or felt more nearly useless. He had been 
alarmed by Effie’s trembling urgency at midnight that he call 
the doctor, who lived across the street. The self-possessed 
practitioner, when he arrived, had promptly called another, as 
well as a nurse from the city. Everybody but Peter had some¬ 
thing to do, and knew how to do it. Peter kept himself out of 
the way until he was called, and was wearied more than they 
all, with nothing to do but to think and fret and wait for 
morning. 

As the night wore on, his soul, from being impatient, grew 
heavy and dark. The doctors, at first uncommunicative, told 
him just before dawn that Effie was not getting through the 
ordeal quite as well as they had wished. They could not speak 
with any certainty, and she would have every chance that their 
skill and care could give, but he must hold himself together. 

With daylight they gave him a little more hope, and a meas¬ 
ure of gladness. Out from the bedroom came the nurse, with a 
carefully-held bundle. She called Peter from his battles with 
an unseen enemy out on the front yard grass, and charged him 
to look at his firstborn, his daughter. 

Which Peter did, but not with any great enthusiasm; his 
thoughts were straying to the bedroom. 

A little later the nurse called him in, and he leant over the 


104 


SHODDY 


bed to see a strange new Effie, just emerging from the slumber 
of utter exhaustion. In her eyes was a question. 

He answered, “Yes, I’ve seen her—our daughter. She will 
be like you.” Which was a pious guess. 

The nurse came and put the tiny bundle by Effie’s side. For 
a few moments she held it close. Then her arms relaxed, and 
she turned her face to Peter, bending over her. 

“Dear boy,” she whispered, “at least you’ll have her. She’ll 
be company for you. Tell her about her mother, won’t you?” 

The words put a deadly fear into his blood. What he saw 
in Effie’s face did but make that fear the blacker. He turned 
to the nurse. 

“What’s the matter with her?” he asked. 

The nurse, hand on the patient’s pulse, said quietly but 
tensely, “I think she’s going to faint. I’ll put the baby in the 
other bed, and I’ll be right back here. But you’d better get 
Doctor Francis back again as soon as you can.” 

While a desperate and urgent Peter was rousing the weary 
doctor from the sleep he had barely begun, Effie’s eyes opened, 
and she saw the nurse lifting the baby from beside her. 

“Let me see her again,” she said, and the nurse bent over 
her with the child. 

Effie seemed to discern that this was a sturdy infant, who 
would have her father’s strong frame, and when the child’s eyes 
opened and she saw how darkly brown they were, her face took 
on a look of content. Something about his daughter would al¬ 
ways remind Peter of the wife of his youth. There was a tear 
on Effie’s cheek; it may be she was grieving for Peter’s loneli¬ 
ness, and for the long years of hoped-for comradeship she knew 
now she would never share. 

The doctor, disheveled, came in. He was shocked. He had 
known this was a serious matter, but not, he had thought, past 
hope. Now hope was gone. He could see that. 

Peter caught the doctor’s helpless gesture. He turned from 
the man to the beloved figure on the bed. Effie saw him, and 
smiled into his eyes. But this was not the strong, competent 
Effie he had always loved; no more than a shadow of that 
other and infinitely dearer in this moment of despair. 

She spoke, but so faintly. He stooped over, and she breathed 
the words into his ear, painfully fighting for breath the while. 

“You will, Peter, won’t you? I mean, let her help you in 


SHODDY 


105 


my place when she grows up. She’s mine—and yours. I’d like 
for her to know a good deal about me, sometimes; so that 
she’ll understand what I had wanted to do. You must teach 
her to be your partner. Only it will be a long time to wait 
until she’s old enough. I’m sorry; if I could have stayed I 
would.” 

The effort must have used up all the strength she had left. 
Her eyes closed, and she breathed with weak laboriousness. 
The doctor knew that it was the end. As his colleague of the 
night, hastily summoned by the nurse, entered, his eyes ask¬ 
ing all manners of questions, Dr. Francis said, simply, “Pul¬ 
monary embolism.” And the other nodded soberly. 

n 

The baby was all right. But Peter, broken and spent with 
grief , could not be comforted for the dead mother by the liv¬ 
ing child. He had scarcely seen the baby at all until Effie, 
yesterday so brave and so eager for this new experience, had 
closed her eyes and slipped away. 

There was love and sympathy enough, if it could have helped. 
Colton Park asked only what was wanted, and would have 
done anything. Garrett, which for a year had known Effie near¬ 
ly as well as it had known Peter, had been always admiring; 
and now it sorrowed with him. But at first all this kindness 
almost revolted the boy. Why should anyone offer these hor¬ 
ribly inadequate condolences, when what he wanted would 
have made them all unnecessary? All he wanted was Effie 
back again; the Effie of last year, last week; his Effie. 

When that mood had left him, he remembered his vocation. 
Even in those earliest days of his ministry he had been, in not 
a few grieving homes, a kindly and much-desired comforter, 
and he bethought him now that too easily he had preached 
resignation to others. Resignation was everything but easy. 

Also, in a little while, he remembered his faith. As in after 
days the Book spoke to him with reminders not to be thrust 
away, so now. The Scripture which first stayed his complaint 
against God was none of his own seeking, nor was it one of the 
passages of consolation he had quoted to others. 

“I think I know what some of hell’s torment is,” he told 
himself. And then there came to mind that word of the Psalm- 


106 


SHODDY 


ist, “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell.” “It may be blas¬ 
phemy,” thought Peter, “but I can see something else in it. 
‘Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell:’—that’s me. ‘Thou 
wilt not suffer thine holy one to see corruption;’—that’s Effie. 
She never did see it. She wouldn’t. She won’t see it now. 
Christ knows better. She died at her post, as he did. She 
went willingly down into the shadow, as he did. What could 
be holier than that?” 

The Colton Park people were lifted out of themselves. They 
loved Peter; now they knew that they had loved Effie, not 
better, but more tenderly; with a simpler affection. And they 
could think of no better way to prove it than to turn it all 
toward him. Because he was so crushed, he needed them. Be¬ 
fore, they had needed him. 

A committee went to Conference, still in session. The bishop 
did the unusual thing of paying special attention to a supply 
preacher’s case. The committee said, in effect, “We expected 
that Brother Middleton would be moved. He was going to 
Colorado.. . But now we want to ask for him back. He ought 
not to go to a strange church right away. Send him back to 
us. He can have a leave of absence for as long as he will take 
it, and when the time comes that he can stand it to think of 
his next appointment, we’ll release him and take our chances.” 

Said the bishop, after talking over with the presiding elder 
the strange request, “I’m not sure that I ought to do it, but I 
am sure I want to do it. And who knows? maybe you and 
your church won’t suffer for making the most Christian request 
of any committee I have met in all my days. I’ll send Mid¬ 
dleton back, and whatever you and he and the elder agree on 
about a leave of absence will be all right with me.” 

All this moved Peter beyond words; almost beyond endur¬ 
ance. The very excess of kindness out of which it came held 
him constantly in the presence of his loss. He did not want 
to forget; God forbid. But he wanted, for a time at least, to 
hold his sorrow in his own heart. Also, he knew he must some¬ 
how try to make a new pattern for his life. The first one, 
wrought out so absorbedly, had been her work as much as 
his; and any new one, though it could not but bear the marks 
of her devotion and strong common sense, would have to be 
altogether different. 

It was such thinking as this which brought him to see, in 


SHODDY 


107 


the end, that there was something in the suggestion of a leave 
of absence. He must get away, and work out his problem in a 
new scene, where he could feel himself insulated from the 
things that confused him. 

Mother Middleton, who came on for the funeral, took him 
and the baby back to Odessa, and two weeks on the home 
place did Peter good. He took the black pony, and rode for 
hours over the open range between Paint Creek and Wolf 
Creek. He spent long days on the hayland, and laid up many 
a yard of its loose stone fence, while he thought and thought. 

Bartelmy. Bonafede and Viola sent love and expressions of 
sorrow; and Peter, to his own surprise, could not bring him¬ 
self to resent the intrusion of their formal message. After all, 
he and Effie had lived these few short years in a comradeship 
wonderful beyond words; and, no thanks to the Bonafedes, 
he owed it to them. 

It was weeks before Peter began to find any boredom in his 
aimless wanderings near home. But by the late fall he was 
ready to be taken out of himself, and that would be a matter 
of new experiences in unfamiliar places. It might even mean 
thinking about new people. 

And then came, just when he was ready to welcome it, a 
telegram from a bishop he knew slightly: “Emergency at 
Parkerville Grace Church. Will appoint you unless you have 
positive objection. Wire acceptance and date arrival.” 

Parkerville! It meant staying in Kansas, but not the Kan¬ 
sas of his boyhood. He knew Parkerville only by reputation— 
a town strangely mixed of Kansas and the new frontier, with 
a few factories to give it a touch of Eastern industrialism. It 
had had its bad men not so long ago—men of the Bill Dalton, 
Cherokee Bill sort. Nevertheless, it was big enough to need, 
or least to have, two Methodist churches. 

Knowing so much, Peter had no excuse for delaying his 
decision. The place would give him a chance to prove him¬ 
self, he thought. He wired the bishop, “Accept appointment; 
can take charge second Sunday December.” 

hi 

When Bartelmy Bonafede left Brewster and went to Kan¬ 
sas City for his bride, on the Sunday night after he received 


108 


SHODDY 


his Calder diploma, he was easier in mind, except for a bother¬ 
some financial uncertainty, than at any time within his mem¬ 
ory. Certainly, he was embarking on a great adventure, but 
the old fear had been exorcised, and with a finality which 
surely precluded any chance of its return. Not only had he 
a job, and a better one than most of his fellow-probationers 
in the conference, but he had the beginnings of a standing in 
one of the honorable if not lucrative professions. He had a 
college degree, which to the people who had known him in his 
native Thornlea would be beyond understanding, almost be¬ 
yond belief. He was about to become the husband of a proud 
and beautiful girl, and the son-in-law of a man of substance 
and position. Truly, he had travelled far since the hungry 
days of Balaklava Terrace, scarcely a dozen years in the past. 

All the accompaniments of the wedding fed fat his young 
complacency. Even the invitations ministered to it. They set 
forth, with those slight additions to the rigidly correct formula 
which Kansas City then favored, that Judge and Mrs. Dimont 
requested the pleasure of the recipient’s presence at the mar¬ 
riage of their daughter Viola to “The Reverend Bartelmy 
Bonafede, A. B.” Bartelmy got hold of a handful of these 
precious engravings, and took a secret, childish delight in send¬ 
ing them to a few people who had known him only as Mark 
Bonafede’s son, or Van Tassel’s hired boy. He sent one to 
Samuel Jessop, Esq., of Thornlea, who once had forced him 
and his to go hungry to bed; and one to the Thornlea Re¬ 
corder. His father and mother received theirs in due course 
from the Dimonts, and Bartelmy forced himself for once to 
write a long letter to his mother, grieving her heart out in 
Nepperhan for the boy who seemed no longer to need her. 

This letter of his cheered her greatly, but not for long. 
Though she wrote affectionately to Viola, and much more 
volumniously to Bart, their answers were slow and perfunc¬ 
tory. Viola thought she knew all she cared to know of Bart’s 
people, and was quite resigned over their inability to attend 
the wedding. Bart had carefully ignored all the hints, rising 
at times to direct suggestions, that the family would be glad 
to come west if he could find out where steady work in his 
father’s line was most likely to be had. 

The wedding itself was a Kansas City boulevard wedding 
of its time, with all the prescribed accessories and appurte- 


SHODDY 


109 


nances. The Judge, with a discernment which Bartelmy highly 
approved, took him aside a little before the ceremony. 

“Bart, my boy,” he said, “you’ve no false delicacy, I hope. 
I know what you’ve had to do with your money, when you got 
any, and I judge you’re not flush, even on your wedding day. 
Am I right?” 

“Not flush, fath—Judge Dimont; no, not really flush,” said 
Bart. 

“You couldn’t be;” the Judge observed; “and you may not 
know it, but you’re marrying an expensive young woman. 
She’ll have a little money of her own, and she’ll need it, until 
you go up a peg or two above Brewster. But that’s all right. 
I’m investing in futures today, and they’re not all financial. 
What I started to say, though, was that Viola tells me you’re 
going to Colorado Springs for the honeymoon. Is that the 
program?” 

“Yes,” admitted Bartelmy; “that’s it.” The suggestion had 
been Viola’s, as a matter of fact; he had not been prepared 
for Colorado. Excelsior Springs would have been more in keep¬ 
ing with his means. He had paid for railway tickets and sleep¬ 
er fare, and the week in Colorado Springs had become already 
a problem in dollars and cents. 

“Well, Bart, as I said, you mustn’t stand on any false 
pride. It’s all in the family. So here’s a little private wedding 
present for yourself; it doesn’t need to be accounted for to 
anybody, and it will help you to keep Viola from worrying 
about money until she must. She could spend her own, but 
I know you would prefer she shouldn’t, not yet. Viola’s a 
wonderful girl; but she’s not used to the Methodist preacher 
style of living, and you and I have got to ease her into it by 
degrees.” 

Bartelmy was too grateful for words, not on account of the 
check alone, though the amount it called for was enough to 
make speech difficult; but almost as much because of the 
Judge’s way of offering it. He didn’t know how to thank his 
father-in-law, and said so. The Judge waved away all that. 

“Never mind the words. You helped me a lot once, and, 
anyway, I’m trusting my girl to you. What’s money, along¬ 
side of that? Just be decent to Viola, and we’ll call it square.” 

He was nearer to sentimentalizing than he had intended. 
Brushing an impatient hand across his eyes, he forced a laugh. 


110 


SHODDY 


To hide his feelings, he even essayed a joke: “I’ve always said 
that whether Viola made her man a good wife or not, she’d 
make him a good husband. So don’t say I didn’t warn you!” 

They took the afternoon train out of Kansas City. Bar- 
telmy, eight years before, had ridden in a day coach over the 
same rails as far as Odessa Junction, eating the dry remnants 
of a lunch put up by his mother. Today he rode, for the 
first time, in a Pullman, joint occupant of a drawing room with 
his bride of an hour, their meals brought in from the diner. 

Gentle, attentive, tender, he was quite the bridegroom; but 
not even the picture of his Viola on the seat opposite him quite 
blotted out the other picture—the forlorn boy of eight years 
ago, adventuring fearfully into the unknown. He felt that 
God had been very good to him, and said as much to Viola, 
who agreed with him. But their thoughts were very far apart. 

IV 

Viola’s ideas of parsonage life were such as she had picked 
up at second or third hand among the preachers’ daughters at 
Calder, added to some slight impressions gained in her infre¬ 
quent contacts with the one preacher’s wife in Kansas City 
whom she knew. Although Judge Dimont had given her some 
warning, she considered herself fully prepared to begin her 
life at Brewster. But from the first day it was an education. 

The girl had spirit. She would have said that she loved Bar- 
telmy, if not so ardently as he could have wished; and already 
her life-purpose had begun to take form. Having chosen a 
minister, for her own sake as well as for his she would work 
towards his career. 

Bartelmy’s people were impressed, congratulating themselves 
over the talented young couple which their church had cap¬ 
tured. Nor was the presiding elder indifferent. He knew Judge 
Dimont by reputation, as most Kansas presiding elders did, 
since railway passes often appeared in the wake of the judge’s 
favor. Bartelmy he had not known until the boy’s application 
for a place came to him the preceding autumn. Evidently this 
was a young man worth watching on his own account. 

The records of the charge were in better shape than usual. 
Bartelmy’s brief office experience in New York had not been 
wasted on him, and in those days the necessary bookkeeping 


SHODDY 


111 


of a small Methodist church was simplicity itself. It is dif¬ 
ferent since the Centenary. 

The Brewster pastorate offered Bartelmy better than an 
ordinary chance. Of the county high school’s five hundred 
students, a good third stayed in town over Sunday. They 
would attend the church which had most to offer them. Thus, 
to the minister who pleased them, the situation afforded oppor¬ 
tunities for local distinction. And Viola knew that if Bart 
really addressed himself to his task, his triumph was sure; for 
the other two ministers of Brewster even to her inexpert eye 
were rather poor stuff. 

When revival time came, Viola found herself hesitating be¬ 
tween her determination that Bartelmy should lead the district 
in the number of his converts, and her scorn of revivals. She 
could not bear either their methods or their manifestations. 
Brewster, as she and Bart deduced from all the preliminary 
talk, required its revivals neat. 

Bartelmy had read much of the methods which Bishop Vin¬ 
cent was recommending to the pastors, and, as he told Viola, 
it would be much more self-respecting, and not nearly so dis¬ 
agreeable, if he could put on a series of meetings such as the 
Bishop had often outlined. 

But a little cautious inquiry showed that nothing of this 
sort would satisfy Brewster. Brewster, if Viola had announced 
it openly, would have concurred in her ambition to lead the 
district, but there was a nearer and dearer objective. “The 
Campbellites” of the town, imposing less rigid requirements 
upon candidates, and being unhampered by the Methodist rule 
of six months probation, could usually make a better numerical 
showing in their revivals. So Brewster Methodism, now that 
it had a college graduate for a pastor, and a pastor’s wife who 
could outsing anything in the county, would be satisfied with 
nothing less than a good old-fashioned protracted meeting. 

Viola saw the opportunity. She said to her husband, “It 
isn’t going to be pleasant, I know; but we’ve got to make the 
best of it. I’ll work up some solos, and if you stick to it you 
can get up a short sermon in a morning’s work. Can’t you buy 
some new books that will help you?” 

“Yes,” said Bartelmy, perforce falling in with her sugges¬ 
tions, “maybe I can. There’s a new collection of revival ser¬ 
mons advertised, and I’ve already sent for a half-dozen paper 


112 


SHODDY 


bound books of illustrations. Another thing; I saw at confer¬ 
ence a new song book, that sells at seven cents a copy. It 
has only fifty songs, but most of them are new here. Don’t 
you think we could make a big feature of the singing? Get up 
a choir of twenty-five or so, I mean. Some of the high school 
folks will be glad to join it. And with your solos we might 
make it a revival a bit different from the sort they have had 
here before, and yet without enough new-fangled ideas to scare 
them into opposition. I think there’s something in it.” 

“So do I/’ said Viola. “The official board won’t want to 
be responsible for the songbooks, but you order them and I’ll 
pay for them. Maybe you can sell the books at a dime apiece 
and get the money back.” 

Bartelmy’s preaching was neither better nor worse than 
that of many another young fellow with his experience and 
training. But to Brewster, it was different. His thought-forms 
were not those of the Missouri Valley. His vocabulary, thanks 
to his omnivorous if ill-assorted reading, was richer than his 
hearers were used to. Though he borrowed his illustrations 
from the books, he knew they would make a better impression 
if they could be brought more realistically to his audience. 
Therefore, by discreetly vague hints that he had been over the 
ground covered by the story of the moment, by slight re¬ 
arrangement of detail, and sometimes—for he had a genuine 
if uninstructed appreciation of emotional values—by bold re¬ 
visions of plot and incident, he worked up a group of revival 
stories which would have held a more sophisticated audience 
than Brewster could produce. That winter’s experience bore 
fruit for many a year, in places every way remote from Brew¬ 
ster. It is not too much to say that Bartelmy Bonafede’s 
stories are today the common property of his denomination. 

The revival, arranged for two weeks, ran to four. At Bar¬ 
telmy’s invitation the presiding elder came over for the last 
Sunday, when Bartelmy had arranged to receive on probation 
the largest group of converts within the memory of Brewster 
Methodists. His very good reason for asking the elder was 
that, not being himself ordained, he could not administer bap¬ 
tism. The elder must also see what a success Bartelmy was; 
but there was no need to write that into the invitation. 

At the end of the two ceremonials, baptism and the recep¬ 
tion of the candidates on probation, all the converts stood in 


SHODDY 


113 


a triple row across the church in front of the pulpit. The 
elder, in bringing the service to a close, spoke first to these 
rows of awkward neophytes, variously enjoying their momen¬ 
tary distinction. He was profusely complimentary to all con¬ 
cerned. Even God came in for part of the credit. 

Bartelmy’s appointment for the second year was a foregone 
conclusion, and at an increase of salary. At the close of the 
revival he and Viola were at the top of their acceptability. 
For the first time in many years there was an unclouded era 
of good feeling in the Brewster Church. The two elements 
which had striven for priority found themselves striving now 
for the favor of the pastor and his wife, and this compelled at 
least a truce. Faction vied with faction in praise of the Bon- 
afedes. 

Then the question of the parsonage arose. Bart and Viola 
drove out one February day to a country member’s to spend 
the night. The snow which was falling as they turned in at 
the farm gate developed before dark into the worst blizzard 
of the winter, and they did not see home again for four days. 
When they plowed their way back to town, more than the 
desperate cold of an empty house greeted them. Inside the 
front door a sizeable snowdrift blocked their entrance, and 
under all the windows, north and west, other graceful drifts 
bore testimony to the searching ingenuity of the recent storm. 

Even Bartelmy was dismayed by the sight. With the ther¬ 
mometer still near to zero, how could they stay in such a 
house? Viola’s reaction was not dismay, but active protest. 

“Bart Bonafede,” she said, “we’ve always known that this 
house was unfit for humans. You’ve simply got to tell the 
trustees that unless they begin to plan for a new parsonage you 
won’t stay another year.” 

As he scurried about; making the fires in the toyo stoves 
which were all the house had provision for, and clearing out the 
snow, Bart worked over in his mind the possible modifications 
of Viola’s ultimatum which he might venture to present to the 
trustees. Himself, he did not believe in ultimatums unless you 
know beyond peradventure you could make them stick. 

When the matter came up in the trustees’ meeting, a Feb¬ 
ruary thaw was making a fair imitation of early spring, and 
the parsonage’s south door had been open to the sun all the 
afternoon. The matter did not seem so urgent. 


114 


SHODDY 


Spring came and went before anything definite was done, 
and the late summer heat was upon Brewster. One day Viola 
told Bart she must arrange to go to Kansas City for a month 
or maybe six weeks. She wanted to be with her mother, and 
near the family doctor. 

“I’m all right,” she said, “and it’s my business to see that 
I stay that way. But there are no facilities in this old shack, 
and you know I don’t like the only doctor we have in the 
church. There would be trouble if I called in Dr. Wyndham, 
though he’s the best doctor here. It would be a scandal if a 
Unitarian doctor brought my baby into the world. So I’ve 
written mother to have my old room fixed up, and I’ll get 
away sometime next week.” 

It was not for Bart to object, especially as Viola’s plan pro¬ 
vided a way of escaping the difficulty about the doctors; but 
he did want to have some part in the decision. So he said, 
“I’d thought of that; and it’s quite the best thing for you to 
do. But I must insist on coming to you when your time draws 
near; even though it may mean being away over a Sunday or 
two.” 

“Of course,” Viola said; “that’s understood.” 

Their son was born in September, and Mrs. Dimont’s cup 
of joy was full. As for the Judge, his ecstasies were almost 
lyrical. Fortunately, the political scene was for the moment 
undisturbed, and he had no public or business responsibilities. 
Viola’s practical mindedness dominated them all. Bart, up 
from Brewster, ran errands, forgot his church, and tried to 
behave like a father; with the usual results. 

Much too soon it was well into October. Viola had been 
but a few days back in Brewster; and she was ill-content. The 
place irked her; she missed the comforts of her old home, and 
while the trustees delayed action or even agreement about the 
parsonage, another winter was coming, and the prospect of 
going through the cold weather in that house, with a baby of 
months—it would have tried a woman more patient than Viola. 

She blamed Bartelmy, but without reason; for, as he mildly 
said, what could he do? He, though no happier than she at 
the outlook, was even yet not inclined to take the high course 
with the dilatory and untroubled trustees. He was for peace. 
The trouble was to find a formula. 

“Very well,” she said, “if you cannot do anything, I will.” 


SHODDY 


115 


And that night she wrote her father such a letter as sent him 
into action within the hour. 


v 

Before the week was gone Judge Dimont and a bishop of 
the church sat in a room of the Coates House in Kansas City. 
The dignitary, on his way to the meeting of a great church 
board, had word from Dr. Burton, one of those presiding 
elders who weigh all their words, that Judge Dimont was a 
man who would not ask too much, and who always acknowl¬ 
edged favors in ways highly advantageous to the cause. Dr. 
Burton brought the two men together, and retired discreetly 
to the hotel lobby. 

The Judge had learned long ago to suit his manner to his 
man. He saw that this man could be dealt with in just one 
way, and, fortunately, in the way which he himself liked best. 

“Bishop,” he said, “it is a short story, and I have nothing 
to conceal. My daughter is the wife of a Methodist preacher, 
and the mother of my six-weeks’ old grandson. That explains 
my interest. But this preacher boy has stuff in him, as I could 
prove if you had the time. My word for it. He’s pastor now 
at Brewster, over in Kansas, and if he had a little more time 
would make it go. Last winter he had the best revival and 
the biggest ingathering in the town’s history—not that I’m so 
strong on that sort of thing myself. But the baby’s just here, 
and my girl is not so well, and the Brewster people will fuss 
for another year or two, hesitating, about a parsonage that 
leaks like a sieve, and is open to the four winds. I’m not ask¬ 
ing you to give Bart Bonafede anything he can’t handle, but 
I’m just asking if you can give him a church—now, right 
away—where there’s a decent parsonage, so that I shan’t be 
wondering all winter whether my daughter and grandson are 
freezing to death. You can send a single man to Brewster, 
maybe. But you know best about that.” 

And he rose to go. It was his habit to end an interview 
himself. But he paused with his hand on the door. 

“One other thing, Bishop. My daughter has told me all 
about it, but I don’t want Bart to know that I have had any¬ 
thing to do with the change, if you make it. You’ll be safe 


116 


SHODDY 


in appointing him on his merits, as Dr. Burton will tell you. 
And my son-in-law need be told no more than that.” 

Dr. Burton knew enough to be influential, and was honest 
enough to be trustworthy. When he returned to the room, he 
confirmed to the bishop all that the Judge had said. Where¬ 
upon the bishop confided in him. “Of course I have many 
more requests such as this than I can take care of,” he said, 
“but it happens there are two vacancies I must fill at once, 
and in the same town. Both pastors have had to move, because 
I couldn’t take either of them away without seeming to favor 
the other, and some change was imperative. The physical con¬ 
ditions will supply what Judge Dimont desires. But the work 
itself is a subtler problem than this young fellow has had to 
face so far. What do you think, Doctor?” 

Dr. Burton had his own information from Calder College 
about Bartelmy Bonafede, and in its light he thought he could 
answer the bishop’s question. 

“Young Bonafede really has ability,” he said. “I’m not so 
sure he has some other essentials for success in our ministry, 
but one thing he needs is to be forced to do better than his 
inclination.” 

“If I send him to First Church, Parkerville, he’ll get that,” 
the bishop observed grimly. 

And he turned to the desk, and began the first of three tele¬ 
grams which saved Viola and Viola’s baby from wintering in 
Brewster’s gusty parsonage. 

Judge Dimont was barely down in the hotel lobby from his 
satisfactory interview with the bishop, and Dr. Burton had 
scarcely finished answering the bishop’s questions about Bar¬ 
telmy Bonafede, when the bell boy brought to the room Peter 
Middleton’s wire. 

The bishop was much relieved. He said, “Brother Burton, 
I’ve done some good work this afternoon. That Parkerville 
trouble was bothering me, and I’ve found a way to settle it. 
You’ve told me what you think of Bartelmy Bonafede for First 
Church, and I’m appointing him. And this wire is from a 
young Garrett man who’s been taking a couple of months off. 
His wife died early in the fall. He’ll take the other church, 
Grace.” 

“What’s his name?” asked the presiding elder. 


SHODDY 


117 


“Middleton; Peter Middleton. You know him, of course. 
He’s Kansas born, I’m told.” 

“Yes, I do know him,” said the other; “and he’s a good man 
for the place. He’s got staying qualities, has Peter.” 

“I’m glad to know it,” said the bishop. 

“By the way, Bishop,” Dr. Burton remarked as he was 
leaving, “did you know that Middleton and Bonafede were old 
friends? They went to Calder College together, if I’m not mis¬ 
taken.” 

“No, I didn’t,” the bishop admitted, “but I’m very pleased 
to hear it. The trouble at Parkerville was because the two 
men who are moving out were most distinctly not friends. 
What you say only makes me the more certain I’ve done some 
good work today.” 


VI 

The Belden House at Parkerville, Kansas, was a pretty good 
two-dollar-a-day, American plan hotel. It “opened its hospi¬ 
table doors”, as the Parkerville Democrat said, to the Bona- 
fedes, and would shelter them until such time as their furniture 
should arrive. When Bartelmy had tentatively suggested a 
boarding house, Viola declined to consider it. “The hotel will 
be bad enough,” she said, with finality. “We’ll stay there until 
the parsonage is cleaned from top to bottom.” 

Viola was inquiring for a nurse girl, but as yet no suitable 
applicant had appeared, so she could not occupy the parsonage 
pew for Bartelmy’s first sermon in Parkerville First Church. 
She stayed in their room at the Belden, with the Kansas City 
Star for company. That least sensational of Sunday papers had 
been in her home all her life, and she knew how to read, with 
the smallest exertion, so much of it as interested her. This 
morning it afforded a single piece of news which to her appeared 
quite sensational enough. 

Bartelmy, returning from the morning service, brought with 
him Colonel Burlington, whom he had shrewdly identified as 
the church’s leading layman, bearing a courtesy title which 
merely meant that he was a lawyer of Southern antecedents and 
had not successfully run for office. The new pastor and his 
wife were to take Sunday dinner with the Burlingtons, and the 
Colonel had come to escort them to his house. 


118 


SHODDY 


Baby Marcus went also, but, once he had been provided with 
a bottle and pillow, he permitted his mother to enjoy herself 
without insisting on much of her attention. He had already 
given evidence of an even and restful disposition. 

Viola waited only until everybody was settled for the before- 
dinner small talk. She asked about the service and the congre¬ 
gation, and heard the sermon politely praised. Then she sprang 
her news. 

“I saw a queer story in the Star this morning,” she said. 
Turning to her husband, a touch of acid mischief in her tone 
the only evidence that she knew her tidings would disturb him, 
“Bart, who do you suppose is coming to be pastor of Grace 
Church here in Parkerville?” 

“I didn’t even know that Grace Church was without a pas¬ 
tor,” said Bartelmy. “Has it been long vacant?” he asked the 
Colonel. 

Colonel Burlington knew more than he intended to tell that 
day. So he only said, “No, not long; in fact, the former pastor 
left about the same time as your predecessor did.” 

“Well, Viola,” Bartelmy asked her, “is the new man some¬ 
body we know?” 

“It’s nobody in the world but Peter Middleton,” said Viola 
crisply. She had never liked Peter, for one thing because she 
felt that he understood her too well; for another, because she 
suspected that he understood her husband, too. 

Colonel Burlington here desired to ask a question. Grace 
Church was not so far away that a First Church leader could 
be indifferent to its fortunes. 

“May I inquire who is this Brother Middleton, Mrs. Bona- 
fede? You and your husband evidently have met him.” 

“We know him,” Viola admitted, “Bartelmy knows him bet¬ 
ter than I do, but I know him as much as I want to. He’s too 
good to suit me.” 

It was plainly Bartelmy’s move, though he would have pre¬ 
ferred to keep his own counsel. 

“Peter Middleton,” he said to the Colonel, carefully, “may 
be too good for Mrs. Bonafede, and perhaps there are times 
when he has to be borne with, but I am bound to say that he’s 
got ability, lots of it. I have known him ever since I came to 
Kansas, though in late years circumstances have broken into 
our old intimacy. He is the son of a prosperous farmer near 


SHODDY 


119 


Odessa, in Kinne County. He graduated at Calder a year ahead 
of me, and has had a course in Garrett. While he was there he 
filled a supply appointment in a Chicago suburb. Early last 
fall his wife died. She was a student at Calder with the rest of 
us. Her death was a great shock to Peter. It is a most surpris¬ 
ing coincidence that he should be coming to be a fellow-pastor 
with me here in Parkerville. I shall look forward with peculiar 
pleasure to our cooperating in this new field.” 

“Quite handsome of you, Brother Bonafede; does you 
credit,” declared the Colonel. “However, I’d go a little slow on 
that cooperation business, if I were in your place. After all, 
First Church is First Church, and we can’t afford to let people 
forget that fact.” 

. Which sentiment Viola approved. “I can’t say I’m glad he’s 
coming,” she said; “he’s all well enough in his way, and of 
course I’m sorry for his loneliness with his wife gone, and all 
that; but we have our own work to consider.” 

Bartelmy said nothing more. He was quite willing to be con¬ 
sidered gracious and brotherly; that reputation did a man no 
harm. But he made a mental note of the Colonel’s readiness to 
proffer advice. That they had met only three times, and only 
quite casually until this morning, gave the lawyer’s promptness 
a significance not lost on his new pastor. 

There was no knowing how Effie’s death might have affected 
Peter’s feelings toward the Bonafedes. Bart’s old engagement 
to Effie, and Viola’s remembered dislike of her, could not be 
effaced, though they might be ignored. While Bartelmy had 
been shocked and grieved, he was not entirely without a fur¬ 
tive feeling of present relief, that at least certain difficult situa¬ 
tions could not now arise. Naturally, with only these two 
Methodist churches in Parkerville, their pastors would have to 
be on pretty intimate terms. It would not be easy, even with 
Peter, but it would have been more difficult if Viola and Effie 
had been brought into the same circle. 

In their hotel room, late the same afternoon, Viola suggested 
the first move. She had not been as sure of their ground as 
she wanted Colonel Burlington to think. She had memories of 
Calder. 

“The thing to do, Bart,” she said, “is to take the lead, and 
keep it. You know well enough that I can’t endure Peter Mid¬ 
dleton, but if you and he have to be rivals here you must 


120 


SHODDY 


take advantage of every chance that comes. He’s no fool; and 
he’s had a seminary course and a Chicago pastorate. But you’re 
pastor of First Church, and you were here first, if only by a 
few days.” 

Bartelmy assented as heartily as seemed prudent. “What 
had you in mind when you spoke about taking the lead, dear?” 

“I meant just that. The paper says he’s to be here some time 
this week, so as to be in his pulpit at Grace next Sunday. It’s 
the Sunday before Christmas. You write and welcome him to 
Parkerville, and invite him to take Christmas dinner with us 
here at the hotel. We can have a private room, I suppose.” 

Bartelmy was quite willing. Indeed, he put more warmth 
into the letter than Viola would have approved; but already he 
was abandoning the habit, heedlessly formed in honeymoon 
days, of showing her his correspondence. 

To Peter the word of welcome from his old friend was most 
grateful. He had been no less surprised that Bartelmy over 
the chance which now made them neighbors, and had felt not 
a little uneasiness about his own course. But Bartelmy’s mes¬ 
sage made everything right. Bygones were to be bygones, so 
far at least, that they were not to be mentioned; and, anyway, 
the two had been chums once. 

He arrived in good time for the Christmas dinner. It was 
almost a success. He paid much attention to baby Marcus, 
thus acquiring some slight merit in the eyes of the baby’s 
mother, though quite innocent of seeking it. 

“My baby is named for Bart’s father,” she told him. “Bart 
was so persistent; said it had been a family name for genera¬ 
tions, but naturally I wouldn’t have it just plain Mark, and he 
let me choose Marcus. Put that way it’s rather distinguished, 
don’t you think? And I’m not going to have it shortened to 
Mark, ever; so you needn’t be counting on that, Bart. What’s 
your baby’s name, Mr. Middleton?” 

“Say ‘Peter’, won’t you, please?” he asked. “I’m not used 
to ‘Mr. Middleton.’ Why, I had to find a name for the baby 
myself, without much help. There was no family name that 
seemed just the thing, and my mother had no special choice. 
So I’ve named her ‘Rhoda’,—don’t exactly know why. I sort 
of like it. Mother has her, at the farm.” 

“I think it’s rather quaint,” said Viola; “maybe she’ll grow 


SHODDY 


121 


up an old-fashioned girl, and then won’t it be just too appro¬ 
priate!” Swiftly she followed one question with another. 

“And where are you going to live here in Parkerville, Mr.— 
er—Peter?” 

“It’s early yet to say for sure,” Peter answered; “but there’s 
an old couple wants to rent the parsonage and take me to 
board and room. That may be the arrangement.” 

“What sort of a parsonage is it, Peter?” asked Bartelmy; 
he had heard things about it. 

“Not so much of a place, I guess, but if it will serve for the 
Beattys, it will probably be good enough for me. I shan’t need 
much except my room and a corner of the parlor now and then. 
It’s likely I shall be out among the people a good deal; they 
seem to be the sort that expects considerable pastoral work— 
and needs it, too, I shouldn’t wonder. I’ll be free”—his face 
clouded at the word—“I mean, there’s nothing to prevent me 
doing as much as they want.” 

“Oh, yes,” Viola assented, something at a loss. She knew 
she ought to say the appropriate thing about Peter’s bereave¬ 
ment, and for her life she couldn’t find words. “But after all, 
I tell Bart the preacher’s reputation nowadays is made by what 
he does in the pulpit. That’s his throne, as the bishop said the 
first time I ever attended conference. I’ve never forgotten it. 
What’s more, I don’t intend to let Bart forget it, either. He’s 
becoming quite a preacher already, Peter, if I do say it.” 

“I can believe it,” Peter said, with a smile that made Bar¬ 
telmy wince, though there was no malice in it. “He’s a natural- 
born platform man. My pulpit work is a long hard grind, 
every time. Not that I don’t like it; don’t get that idea. But 
it takes work. I’m a good deal of a plodder, you know.” 

“I suppose,” said Viola, “that your church will need more 
pastoral work. I heard there’s considerable poverty, and even 
worse things in that end of town, and the people probably need 
practical help more than they need preaching.” 

Peter laughed. “Most people do, seems to me. Still I hope 
my preaching may be of some practical help in itself, too.” 

“Oh, yes, indeed,” Viola hastened to say. “But about the 
other—we don’t know yet, of course, just what First Church 
is able to do, but I’m sure if there’s any way we can help we’ll 
be glad to; won’t we, Bart?” 

Bartelmy said, “Yes, of course;” though he wished that 


122 


SHODDY 


Viola would not seem so patronizing when she thought she was 
being pleasant. He knew that Peter was not to be patronized. 

VII 

As Peter walked the streets of “that end of town,” in his 
first few weeks, he decided that Viola was right, no matter what 
her implications might have been. Poverty was there, plenty 
of it, as well as the “worse things”. It was the section in 
which the people who worked at the cement plant lived, and 
the glass workers, and the few men who kept the little foundry 
going. Also, many people of no visible means. 

The workers of the district were no special problem. Among 
these who were in his church, Peter found here and there a 
saint in the making; but mainly the usual proportion of aim¬ 
less good nature, small jealousies, conventional piety, mingled 
spite and spirituality, dull decency, high idealism, dogmatic 
narrowness, and voiceless integrity, which go to make up the 
constituency of any middle-western church, rich or poor. That 
most of his people were poor did not disturb him. He was 
more disturbed over the complacent dullness of so many homes, 
and the apathetic animalism which presented a front harder 
than positive wickedness against the work he had come to do. 

Therefore it brought almost a sense of relief when he had 
confidential word, less than a month after his arrival, that the 
glass workers were secretly organizing, with a man from the 
“outside” to help them. He thought he knew what that would 
mean. Organized labor was a new thing in Parkerville. The 
grievances of the men were many and sore;—low wages, of 
course, irregular employment, the terrific heat which, if more 
bearable in winter, was likewise more deadly than in summer; 
and a special complaint against the manager of the plant, who 
made all their troubles worse. He was the only man in Parker¬ 
ville who had a sufficient skill and knowledge to superintend a 
glass plant, and, being a little-souled creature, lorded it over 
his narrow principality with a small man’s delight in tyranny. 
All this was good soil for the organizer’s seed. 

Peter’s slight experience with labor troubles had at least 
made him dislike them. But the contacts which he had made 
at Colton Park with industrial workers had shown him that 
discontent over starvation wages and evil working conditions 


SHODDY 


123 


might be a means of grace. Bad as its immediate consequences 
might be, he felt that protest was better for the men’s self- 
respect than the dumb acceptance of a virtual serfdom. 

This, with more ideas of the same tenor, he made into a 
sermon, and promptly got more attention from Parkerville than 
any Methodist preacher within living memory. 

Peter’s sermon was front-page stuff for the Parkerville 
Democrat. It was taken as a danger-signal by the glass factory 
crowd in local financial and social circles, which promptly 
went into action. This upstart preacher from nowhere;—who 
was he to encourage unrest and to sow the seeds of discontent 
among the hitherto well-disposed employees of a flourishing in¬ 
dustry? Colonel Burlington was instructed to take steps. 

The Colonel sought out Bartelmy at once. And, like the 
man of direct speech he prided himself on being, he went 
straight to the point. 

“Look here, Bonafede, of course you don’t agree with young 
Middleton; you’ve too much sense. But he’s a friend of yours, 
and you’ve sort of endorsed him. I hope you see, now that 
he has broken out as he has, that it’s your job to help us shut 
him up. You can give him some advice he very much needs. 
And if I were you I’d lose no time. He ought to know that 
no man can come here and hope to succeed if he mixes into 
affairs which threaten the incomes of many of our best people.” 

Bartelmy relished neither the implication that he himself was 
in some way to blame, nor the task of trying to make Peter 
shut up. 

He had spoken of Peter perhaps with undue warmth and 
positiveness. At the time it had seemed to him a fine, unselfish 
gesture for the pastor of First Church to welcome so generously 
the new man, coming to what everybody considered the “sec¬ 
ond” church. But most assuredly he had not meant to take 
any responsibility for Peter’s ideas. He told the Colonel so. 

Then he said, “Brother Middleton’s intentions are good, I 
am sure, Colonel, but I must admit that he is not as careful as 
he might be. That has always been his failing. If his zeal is 
aroused, and his sympathies are worked on, he does not con¬ 
sider that he may hurt the interests and feelings of people out¬ 
side the group he is thinking of. If opportunity offers, I will 
speak to him, and it may be I can show him the harm he is in 


124 SHODDY 

danger of doing.” Not that Bartelmy believed for a minute 
he could. 

“You’d better make an opportunity, and not wait for one,” 
said the Colonel curtly. “If Middleton breaks out again we 
may have a strike on our hands. And that we intend to pre¬ 
vent, if there’s any way to do it. Remember, my boy,” and he 
put his hand on Bartelmy’s shoulder, “we’re expecting great 
things from your pastorate. You stand by us in this little diffi¬ 
culty, and you’ll not lose by it. But we’re counting on you to 
make Middleton see the light.” 

If it had been the other way about, now! Peter knew how 
to talk to Bartelmy, but Bartelmy didn’t know how to talk to 
Peter. There was nothing new about that, only just now it put 
Bartelmy at a distinct disadvantage. Having gone to Peter and 
made his opportunity, as Colonel Burlington had rather bluntly 
recommended, he found the going, if anything, more difficult 
than usual. 

“They’re talking about your last Sunday’s sermon, Peter,” 
he said, when he knew he could avoid the topic no longer. 

“Who is talking about it?” Peter asked. He knew the fac¬ 
tory people were; not the glass workers only, but all the work¬ 
ers who lived in his part of the town. But naturally Bartelmy 
wasn’t meaning them. 

“Oh, I hear it in my pastoral work,” said Bartelmy vaguely. 
“And it isn’t being well received, if you want me to be frank.” 

“I didn’t ask you to be frank, old man,” Peter laughed, “but 
don’t let that bother you. I’m not sensitive about my sermons 
—yet.” 

“I know,” Bartelmy admitted; “but, really, Peter, if you’d 
be a little more careful to find out all the facts before you 
preach on controversial subjects you would get along better. 
You probably don’t know even now that many of the stock¬ 
holders of the glass works are in First Church. They have 
heard me speak highly of you, and naturally they wonder that 
a friend of mine should so lightly antagonize their interests.” 

“Now, Bart,” said Peter, “we are friends, in spite of many 
things we needn’t go into now. I was even hoping we might 
get back to something of the good old intimacy of our first 
year together. So please don’t let’s get started on this business. 
It’s pretty bad, and if we can’t agree about it, we’d better let 
it alone. I feel much too strongly to back down, or even to be 


SHODDY 


125 


patient with the dividend grabbers. You may say you have 
stockholders in your church. Well, I have glass-blowers in 
mine. And, if I have to take sides, though I’d rather work to 
do away with ‘sides’ entirely, I’m stronger for the poorly-paid 
men who make the glass than for the men who get the big 
profits.” 

Bartelmy protested. “But, Peter, can’t you see that there 
is a real other side? These ‘dividend grabbers’, as you call 
them, are good men. They made the glass works possible, and 
give employment to many people. They devote much money 
to good causes. It isn’t fair to the church in general for us to 
put them on the defensive, and maybe, to alienate them from 
the church and its work. We can’t afford to do it.” 

Peter could not repress a sigh of weariness. This was the 
Bartelmy he had half hoped might be forgotten. But evidently 
it was the only Bartelmy he could deal with. 

“Bart,” he said, “you’ve asked for it, and you might as well 
have it. I’m squarely on the side of the workers, whenever, as 
in this case, it is a question of big dividends on one side, and a 
decent human chance at life, to say nothing of self-respect, on 
the other. You say we may alienate the people who put part 
of the dividends into the church. Suppose some of us do. If 
these stockholders and the system of things which they repre¬ 
sent keep on trying to buy the silence of the church, do you 
know what’s likely to happen?” 

Bartelmy said he didn’t, which was quite true. He had no 
idea of what Peter was driving at. 

“This will happen. The church has paid altogether too little 
attention to people like my glass blowers. Yes; I said ‘my’ 
glass blowers. I haven’t known them long, and I don’t know 
them very well, so far; but they’re mine. And I’m claiming 
them for the church. Some day a church will see that if it 
can’t be true to its own genius without offending men like your 
Colonel Burlington, for example, it may as well make a re¬ 
adjustment. It can turn to the workers, who already under¬ 
stand Jesus better than most stockholders can. And that church 
will discover in the workers so much latent capacity for 
brotherhood that in teaching them it can start miles ahead of 
the place where it has had to begin with these others. It will 
find the workers can more easily grasp the real simplicities of 
the Gospel, and already have such riches of human interest, 


126 


SHODDY 


that it will have more than an equivalent for the dollars of the 
men who are so poor that they have nothing but dollars to 
give.” 

“Where did you get all that, Peter?” Bartelmy asked in 
frank amazement. 

“Well, Bart, you may not recognize it, but that’s a piece 
of my sermon. I learned some of it by reading in all sorts of 
books, some by associating in Chicago with people who know 
a sight more than I do. But some of it I’ve learned at first 
hand in these few weeks over in the east end of this town of 
Parkerville, the town in which you and I have to do our work 
and get our results. Of course I don’t want to see the church 
break away from either side. There’s no real need that it 
should. But the difficulties of getting together are immense. 
The owners think they have so much the upper hand; though 
they are as blind to their real interests as most of the men are. 
They won’t change their policies either for your arguments or 
mine. And the men are not ready for much, yet. Only a few 
of them see what they really need to strike for. The majority 
think they just need more wages, when the big thing, for them 
and the owners as well, is to consider the glassworks as an in¬ 
dustrial partnership. But it’s slow work, getting the men, even, 
to think that way. And it will take longer to make the stock¬ 
holders see it. Belknap, the organizer, who’s trying to get the 
men together, has much more influence than I have, and he 
talks money more than he does anything else. They listen to 
me, of course; but they pay attention to him.” 

“If it’s as hard as all that,” said Bart, “what can you hope 
to do? The organizer puts in all his time, and he knows his 
job. You have other things on your hands.” 

“I know,” Peter assented. “All the same, I’ve got to help, 
anywhere there’s a chance. It may count in the long run.” 

Bartelmy got up to go. “I wish I saw it all as plainly as 
you do, Peter,” he said, “but I don’t. And what do you get 
out of it? Only the ill-will of people who deny that you have 
any right to interfere in their private affairs.” 

“I get more, old man,” Peter answered. “But you may not 
think it worth having. It’s all a matter of taste. Or opinion. 
One of my opinions is that this thing is a good deal' more than 
somebody’s private business. Anyway, I’ve got to go my own 
road. You know that.” 


SHODDY 


127 


“Yes,” said Bartelmy. “I know that. And you always seem 
to be sure you have something to go by. I wish I could feel 
as sure.” 

It was a touch of the old Bart, and Peter rose to it. “Bart,” 
he said, his hand on the other’s shoulder, “it’s not for me to 
preach to you. But you can be just as sure as I am. Or any¬ 
body. You know where the realities are.” 

But Bart could only say, “Maybe;” he would not trust him¬ 
self in Peter’s hand. He knew he couldn’t afford it. And so 
he went away. 


VIII 

Colonel Burlington made his request for Bartelmy’s report 
a day or two later, during their first financial session. Save for 
a few dollars each Sunday night, turned over out of the loose 
collections by the treasurer of the Board of Stewards after pay¬ 
ing the janitor, Bartelmy had received nothing on his salary. 
Colonel Burlington made an appointment with him at the 
Citizen’s Bank, where he turned over to him a check for what 
salary was due to date. With this check, by the Colonel’s ar¬ 
rangement, Bartelmy opened the first bank account of his life. 

Nobody else was in the little reception room, and Colonel 
Burlington suggested that they sit down for a moment. Then 
he came at once to the point. 

“Have you talked with your friend Middleton about his 
sermon?” 

“Yes,” said Bartelmy, who, caught unawares, wished he had 
taken the trouble to work up some plausible account of the 
interview, “I have. It was not so satisfactory as I had hoped, 
but that sermon of his can be partly explained by his experi¬ 
ences before he came here. When he was in Chicago he fell in 
with some pretty radical people—preachers and others whose 
work was in the slums. And then he’s been reading the wrong 
books. Still, I don’t think there’s any immediate danger of 
trouble from him. That organizer is more important than Mid¬ 
dleton, just now. His arguments mean more to the men than 
anything Peter can say. They like Peter, but Belknap talks 
money.” 

The Colonel banged his fist on the table. “And money talks 1 
Bonafede, ’nuf said. I see what you mean. We’ve been think- 


128 


SHODDY 


ing of that very same thing. All we needed was to be sure 
which was key man, Middleton or Belknap. No use to get you 
mixed up in it, but you’ve confirmed what I’ve said all along. 
You needn’t tell your friend that he’s due to run out of sap 
pretty soon; though he is, if I don’t miss my guess. Your re¬ 
port will convince the others that I knew what we have to do. 
It will be the best of all ways of blocking Middleton’s game, 
and I’m glad to find that you agree with me about it.” 

Bartelmy was quite unaware that he had made any sugges¬ 
tion capable of being used to block Peter’s game, having no 
thought that the Colonel imputed shrewdly-veiled meanings to 
his quite casual remarks about the relative influence of Peter 
and Organizer Belknap. But that did not prevent him from a 
deprecating acceptance of the Colonel’s approval. Nor did it 
prevent that gentleman from telling the directors, at their next 
called meeting, that the young pastor of First Church was 
wise beyond his years, and saw clearly what should be done. 

“Of course,” the Colonel explained to his associates, “I was 
careful not to speak too out-and-out. So was Bonafede. That’s 
one thing I like about him. But he knows. He suggested what 
was in effect the same idea I have already proposed, and he 
backed it up by an observation that ought to be easy to prove. 
There was no hint of a plan, you understand. That’s our 
business, not his.” 

In a few days it began to be noticed by the more observing 
glass workers that Belknap, though he had come among them 
to organize them into a union preparatory to a strike, was los¬ 
ing interest. He called meetings of the cooperating committees, 
and then stayed away. He forgot to pay bills which he had 
run up in the stores of the neighborhood; and his small bor¬ 
rowings, “until I get my check from headquarters,” were not 
repaid. He became cantankerously critical of the men who 
had been the first and readiest to respond to his plan for a 
union, berating their lack of interest and their thick-headedness. 
His popularity waned swiftly; and, with it, the spirit of revolt. 

In all this there was nothing to lay a finger on, but one day 
Joe Sullivan, one of the best men among the glass workers, 
came to Peter with a report to make. 

“Mr. Middleton,” he said, “I think Belknap is crooked. I 
was up the road Sunday, and I saw him on the train with one 
of Colonel Burlington’s closest friends. They didn’t see me, 


SHODDY 


129 


and just before he got off at Lawton Junction I heard him say 
to the other man, 'You shall have it Saturday.’ Now, what 
were they up to? What was Belknap going to send to a man 
he is supposed to be fighting?” 

Peter could not say; but with Joe, he feared a betrayal. On 
the next Saturday Sullivan had an answer to his own question; 
he and six other men found discharge notices in their pay en¬ 
velopes. These were the very seven who, under mutual pledges 
of secrecy until the organization was deemed strong enough to 
come out in the open, had formed the committee which was 
Organizer Belknap’s first move in the rounding-up of the 
workers. 

The news spread quickly. Inexpert in labor struggles, most 
of the other men began to be afraid for their own jobs. On the 
next Tuesday night, pursuant to a call, there was a meeting at 
Joe Sullivan’s home. Apart from the seven scapegoats, only 
two or three others came near. There was no sign of Belknap, 
and the little group did no more than talk in aimless, dispirited 
fashion. Though each of the original committee knew well 
enough that he had been discharged for daring to support an 
effort at unionizing the plant, there was no proof. 

After the last of the men had gone, Sullivan went around 
to Peter’s room at the Beattys, and told him how everything 
confirmed his suspicion about the organizer. 

"That Belknap sold us out; I’m sure of it. He was the only 
man who could name the seven of us, unless we did it our¬ 
selves; and we didn’t. This was what he meant on the train 
when he promised something to Lawyer Jenner by Saturday. 
It was a list of our names. He had all the week to make his 
getaway before we could find out what he had done. We’re 
out, and he’s gone, and there won’t be any strike. Mind, I 
don’t blame you, Mr. Middleton, but maybe if you hadn’t 
spoken out so bold like in your sermon, the bosses might have 
been kept in the dark until we were too strong to be double- 
crossed.” 

"I’m sorry, Joe,” Peter said, "and a good deal more than 
sorry. Maybe I was in too much of a hurry. But if Belknap 
did work this trick, don’t you suppose they would have found 
ways of getting at him, whether I had spoken or kept still? I 
know there’s not much comfort in that, or in finding out that 
this is just a skirmish in what may have to be a long war. I 


130 


SHODDY 


wish we could even get rid of the war idea, but we are all 
readier to fight than to think and to reason things out.” 

It hurt, all this; but he could not persuade himself that he 
had been precipitate. He had depended too much, perhaps, on 
the good faith of that man Belknap, who almost certainly had 
turned traitor to the men who trusted him. But what Peter 
vainly tried to think through was the thoroughness of Belknap’s 
treachery. It must have been a powerful inducement which 
would lead him to end his career as a labor leader in that sec¬ 
tion. How had the owners contrived to get rid of him? 

There was a quick subsidence of strike talk. The glass 
workers thought of their discharged shopmates, and for the 
moment were resigned to hold their jobs on any terms what¬ 
ever. And there was much satisfaction in the banks and offices 
on Grand Avenue, where practical business men told one an¬ 
other that it was no use fooling with industrial troubles; you’d 
simply got to fight fire with fire. 

IX 

Colonel Burlington, or Bartelmy, or Peter himself, which¬ 
ever you will, had been wholly right in his estimate of the 
extent of Peter’s influence in labor circles. Because he would not 
agree that the men needed nothing beyond an advance in 
wages, many of the workers lost interest in his preaching. Be¬ 
cause he bore down more heavily on the sin he found in his 
own parish, though daily learning more about the sins of the 
rest of the town, the love of others waxed cold. But he had 
friends who stuck to him with determined if not always demon¬ 
strative loyalty. 

Doug—not Douglas, if you don’t mind—Swanley was one 
of them. When Peter had come to Grace Church, it was Doug 
with his wild team of ponies who delivered the new preacher, 
bag and baggage, at the Beatty cottage. Doug never forgot 
how readily Peter had accepted the invitation to ride with him 
on the wagon’s high seat, and few who saw or heard the par¬ 
son’s progress from the station to his rooming place are likely 
to forget that. Peter enjoyed it, not knowing that Doug was 
the town’s most hilarious and irrepressible sinner, nor that at 
the outset, by his unashamed ride with Doug Swanley, he him¬ 
self had lost caste with certain good citizens; for Doug drove his 


SHODDY 131 

ponies like a small-town Jehu, plus all the rowdy boisterous¬ 
ness of a sociable cattleman who had just drawn his pay. 

Time came when Peter and Doug got to grips in a strictly 
private struggle for Doug’s soul; and one night, in the Beatty 
parlor, the boy had such a conversion as Peter would have 
openly derided in any penitent less broken and humble than his 
once swearing, roystering teamster. Thenceforward Doug 
Swanley had two dominating certainties in his life;—the vision 
of Christ, crude and partial enough, which had come to him at 
Peter’s side one midnight; and Peter himself, the first preacher 
he had ever loved or feared. 

The thing which had happened in Doug Swanley’s life never 
became epidemic; but before the year was over Peter had a 
queerly-assorted group of devotees, like-minded young fellows, 
apparently unable to acquire the vocabulary of the prayer 
meeting, rarely present even on Sunday mornings, but giving 
themselves with steady devotion to the evening service, and 
bringing to bear a real if inarticulate demand for the best that 
the preacher could give. They developed a habit of dropping 
in at Beatty’s after meeting, partly because Mrs. Beatty shame¬ 
lessly closed her eyes to their foragings among the pantry 
shelves. 

Only when the discussion was repeated at second—or third 
—hand was there any likelihood of trouble. And it was such a 
mischance that gave Colonel Burlington an unfair advantage. 

The Colonel had bought one of the first “horseless carriages” 
that found its way west of the Missouri, and he needed a driver 
for it. In those days only a man who understood the peculiari¬ 
ties of the new contrivances from intimate knowledge of their 
construction would presume to take liberties with them. Doug 
Swanley was such a man. He had worked a few months in an 
Indiana factory where the things were made, and he got the 
job with Colonel Burlington. 

Leaving the office one afternoon, the Colonel told Doug to 
drive around by the freight yards, instead of going straight 
home. Their road took them past Grace Church. 

“I hear you are a pretty regular attendant at this church, 
Doug,” he said. 

“Not exactly what you would call regular,” said Doug. “I 
don’t go mornings. Can’t, now. But I’m there most Sunday 


132 


SHODDY 


nights. And after meeting I show up with the other boys at 
the Beatty place where the preacher rooms.” 

“That’s interesting,” said Colonel Burlington. “What do you 
do at Beatty’s?” 

“Oh, just talk. That is, Preacher Middleton talks, and some¬ 
times some of us ask questions, and then we have it back and 
forth. Mrs. Beatty sets up the cookies or maybe a cake or a 
couple of pies, and a pitcher of lemonade. Everybody has a 
nice time.” 

“Does Mr. Middleton talk religion?” the Colonel asked. He 
was not meaning to be inquisitive, nor did Doug think him so, 
but answered without hesitaton, man to man. 

“Sure he talks religion. That’s what we want. But not the 
way he talks in his sermons, exactly. He goes at us straighter, 
because he sees that we’re asking for it. He’s no Holy City 
sort of sky-pilot, though. Never mentions heaven. * Talks about 
Parkerville and its folks, mostly; ’specially us.” 

“But doesn’t that make it somewhat embarrassing for some 
of you?”v 

“Not so much. ’Course, we know he’s got the goods on us. 
But what he says ain’t preaching; it’s the truth.” And Doug 
was quite; unconscious that he had said anything to make the 
Colonel laugh. 

“That’s good enough to tell at the club,” the Colonel said, 
chuckling again. “Do you believe jail that Mr. Middleton says?” 

“Why not?” asked Doug. “He knows. He ain’t been shut 
up with books all the time. But some things he says about the 
Bible are different from what they tried to learn me at Sunday 
School.” 

“What, for instance?” 

“Well, the Jonah story, for one. He says that’s a missionary 
story, not a fish story. ,And about the bears that a priest or 
somebody got to chew up the kids for calling him Baldy; and 
the Noah’s ark business. He calls some of ’em traditions, I be¬ 
lieve /the word is; and some parts of the Bible he says are 
poetry, though it sounds like punk poetry to me. Then he talks 
about us. One of the boys had got all lit up one night not long 
ago, and Peter found it out. The kid was sorry enough, after, 
and the preacher had sense enough not to rub it in. I asked 
him the next Sunday night if he thought getting drunk was 
the worst thing a fellow could do. He said it was pretty bad. 


SHODDY 


133 


Another of the boys said he thought being a church member 
and getting rich off what poor people had to stand for was 
worse than getting drunk. He said, the preacher did, right off, 
‘So do I.’ <Well, Colonel, I ain’t a church member, and I don’t 
either get drunk or get rich off of anybody; but the preacher 
is right.” 

Doug had warmed to his subject, and, since Colonel Bur¬ 
lington seemed to be listening with interest, he went on. “Yes, 
and Preacher Middleton don’t believe in a brimstone hell. 
Neither do I.” Whereupon some thing, inside of him told Doug 
that he had made what might seem like an audaciously in¬ 
fidel confession, and at once he was smitten with a most un¬ 
characteristic taciturnity. 

The Colonel tried a few more questions, but could get no 
more than laconic disclaimers; “I dunno;” “Maybe;” “Uh- 
huh” 


x 

Colonel Burlington, to do him justice, was no heresy hunter. 
But.it irked him that a mere mechanic should be hearing and 
accepting strange doctrines from a Methodist preacher. Doug’s 
ready approval of Middleton’s ideas showed that the preacher 
could be dangerous. What if some of the working class in 
Parkerville got to believing all this modern stuff, and some 
even more dangerous? 

He did not forget to repeat to his club familiars Doug’s re¬ 
mark about Peter; “What he says ain’t .preaching; it’s the 
truth!” and got his laugh. On top of that he rehearsed other 
of Doug’s comments, which did not seem so funny. 

“But, Colonel,” said the largest stockholder, except the 
president, in the Citizens’ Bank, “really, that’s going too far, 
don’t you think? I’m no theologian myself, but a preacher who 
doesn’t believe in hell, and who has so little objection to 
drunkenness, can hardly be a safe man to have in the east end 
of this town. He’s made trouble already; and this sounds as 
though he could make more. Can’t you do something?” 

The Colonel had been asking himself the same question. “I 
don’t know,” he answered; “there’s probably ino use in speak¬ 
ing to any of Middleton’s members. He seems to be getting a 
grip on them. But I’m a Methodist, you vknow, and I’ve 


134 


SHODDY 


learned that it’s never more than a few months to conference. 
And at conference preachers are moved for all sorts of reasons.” 

A few days later the Colonel called Peter up. He was no 
man for hurrying, and he felt inclined to study this young 
agitator a little before going further. 

“Won’t, you lunch with me tomorrow, Mr. Middleton?” he 
asked. “I’ve been thinking that you and I ought to get better 
acquainted.” 

Peter could see no reason for refusing, though he was not 
specially drawn to Colonel Burlington. The appointment be¬ 
ing made, he found himself the next day with the Colonel at 
a quiet table in the Belden dining room. 

They talked of many things. As the Colonel began to realize 
that his guest was something more than “just a preacher,” his 
mood of formal if gracious hospitality vanished. He felt that 
he could deal with Middleton on more familiar ground. 

“If you’ll pardon my saying so, you’re wasting yourself at 
Grace Church, Middleton,” he began after a pause in which 
each man had continued to size up the other. “I’ve been in 
this town a long time, and you’re the first man that church has 
had who showed any marks of real ability. I doubt if your 
people appreciate it.” 

Peter could be flattered, but not in that fashion. “My short 
experience,” he said, “makes me feel that no preacher is too 
good for his church. I think you misjudge my folks’ capacity 
for appreciation, too. Why, to say nothing of all the others, I 
have a bunch of young fellows there who keep me extended all 
the time, as far as my mind will stretch.” 

“I’ve heard of them. My man Swanley is one of them, 
isn’t he?” 

“Doug Swanley? Yes, indeed; one of the best.” 

“But aren’t you afraid to be giving them so many new 
opinions that may disturb their religious faith?” 

“I might be, if they’d had any faith to speak of. But most 
of them didn’t know a doctrine from a darning needle when I 
first began to get at them. Some of them, I find, have a queer 
sort of natural theology, but if they ever got anything real out 
of whatever contacts they’ve had with the church they don’t 
show it.” 

Colonel Burlington had no illusions about his own theologi¬ 
cal knowledge, and he had not been impressed by his chief 


SHODDY 


135 


stockholder’s criticism of Peter’s disbelief in hell. Little as he 
knew on such subjects, he felt that the criticism lacked co¬ 
gency; not for years had he heard a sermon on the physical 
suffering of the damned, and he realized that nowadays the 
doctrine had its difficulties. So he abandoned that lead. 

And he could not be insensible to the simple directness of 
Peter’s manner. Though Bartelmy Bonafede was quite to his 
mind as a preacher, being at once fluent and impersonal, he 
admitted to himself that Middleton’s was probably the stur¬ 
dier character. All of which did not obscure Middleton’s un¬ 
desirability for the pulpit of Grace Church, from the business 
and the First Church point of view. 

“Well, Middleton,” he said after a pause, “I’m not inclined 
to rail at anything you can do for those young fellows. But 
I’m still of the opinion that you’re not getting the chance you 
ought to have.” 

And then the Colonel shifted his ground. “You will remem¬ 
ber, Middleton, that I said nothing to you about it at the time, 
but all the same I was interested, as well as a little disturbed, 
by that sermon you preached when there was talk of a strike 
at the glass works.” 

Even unsophisticated Peter began to get the Colonel’s drift. 
So he would be on his guard. “What was there about it that 
disturbed you, Colonel?” 

“Oh,” the Colonel said, “not so much what you said as the 
general implication of your attitude. I’ve often noticed that 
you young men come out of college and seminary with abstract 
notions of industrial questions, and when you get to dealing 
with actual conditions you are liable to go very far astray.” 

“But, Colonel,” said Peter, warming up in spite of his re¬ 
solve to be wary, “it was the actual condition here in Parker- 
ville that stirred me; there was nothing abstract about it at all. 
I’d been finding out how these people live, and what they have 
to endure and to look forward to.” 

“I know, my boy; I know. But I wonder if you thought, 
at the same time, of the people who made the glass works pos¬ 
sible, and who have provided the chance of a livelihood for 
these workers. They put their money into a rather risky enter¬ 
prise, and took the chances. They can’t afford to have their 
investments menaced by unrest and disaffection, especially 
when the trouble is stirred up by outsiders.” 


136 


SHODDY 


“Maybe not, Colonel. Still, they take fewer risks than the 
workers take. They have their homes and their positions and 
their other income, apart from their investment in the glass 
works; but my people have only their labor. When they are 
forced to sell that for too little, or can’t sell it at all, the only 
thing for them to do is to move away or starve. They haven’t 
the money to move with, and so they stay—and come pretty 
near starving, sometimes. No wonder they listen to anybody, 
outsiders even, for, though they risk everything, they have 
nothing to say about wages, or short time, or hours. For them 
it’s a bare take it or leave it proposition.” 

“Which is what has made America the greatest industrial 
power in the world,” said the Colonel. “Everybody takes risks. 
But money can’t be driven into obviously unprofitable enter¬ 
prises. That’s impossible; a contradiction in terms. Make any 
business unprofitable, and capital must avoid it. If the glass 
company met the wishes of the workers, it would soon be in a 
receiver’s hands.” 

Peter leaned across the table in an access of eagerness. 
“Colonel Burlington,” he said, “I’m not an economist. But 
there’s a notion I can’t get rid of, about that very thing. I 
know that any business is a sort of partnership. The glass 
company here provides the work and the management, and the 
workers furnish their labor. Considering the other advantages 
the stockholders have, don’t you think it’s up to them to devise 
ways of making the business profitable without wasting the 
strength and spirit of the workers? That’s a management job. 
America will hold her place as the greatest industrial nation 
only if American employers work as hard to conserve its man 
power as they do now to protect all our other resources.” 

“All very well, Middleton,” the Colonel retorted; “all very 
well in theory. But there’s a practically unlimited supply of 
labor, especially as immigration is increasing year by year; and 
your notion would cost a good deal more than most businesses 
could stand. I know that’s true of the glass works.” 

“Of course it would,” said Peter, “as business is run. Be¬ 
sides, the glass works was a speculation; I’ve heard how it 
came to be organized. And the time will come when immigra¬ 
tion will not be as important a labor supply as it is now, and, 
when it falls off for any reason, if business never thinks of 
reducing costs except at the point of what it pays for labor, it 


SHODDY 


137 


will find itself up against a stone wall. Why can’t you busi¬ 
ness men turn your attention to other ways of making your 
enterprises pay, instead of always thinking about reducing 
wages? You can’t get them down very far, if at all, and, any¬ 
way, wouldn’t it be better for all industry if wages went up 
instead of down, so that the workers would have more money 
to spend?” 

Colonel Burlington gazed with genuine admiration at his 
young guest; but back of that was the deepening certainty that 
this active-brained young preacher must be got into a less dan¬ 
gerous pulpit than Grace Church. 

“I’ll tell you what, Middleton,” he said. “I said you were 
wasting yourself in that church. I’ll say more. You’re wasting 
yourself in the ministry. If you’d go into business, it would 
take you a little time to shake off some of your impossible 
notions, but before long you would be showing your real gait. 
Why, man, I believe it would pay the glass company to take 
you on, right now. Once you get the right point of view, you 
would be worth a big salary; far more than you can hope to 
get by preaching. Leave preaching to men like Bonafede. He’s 
a born preacher; but you’re a bom manager of men.” 

Peter laughed. He was young enough to enjoy the flattery, 
and too settled to let it move him. 

“Thank you, Colonel, for a rather doubtful compliment,” he 
said. “It’s pleasant, I admit, to hear you say that. But it’s 
the best of all reasons why a preacher should stay in the min¬ 
istry. You’re right on one point. I’m no such preacher as 
Bartelmy—we were boyhood friends, you know, so that I have 
a license to be familiar—but I believe there’s room in the 
church for both kinds.” 

The Colonel settled with the waiter, and they got up to go, 
leaving the room together in the friendliest fashion. But the 
Colonel was saying to himself, “There must be a way to get 
this boy promoted out of Parkerville. We couldn’t weather a 
strike next year, and if he comes back I doubt if we could 
head it off.” 


XI 

Life moved easily for the Bonafedes in First Church par¬ 
sonage. Baby Marcus thrived; Viola had found a jewel of a 


138 


SHODDY 


nurse, a quiet, reserved colored woman, who almost from the 
first day conceived a deep and passionate affection for the 
child. 

So Viola had time for such activities as she had deemed 
worthy her-attention. Without forgetting her larger ambitions 
for her husband or her own interest in the Parkerville Woman’s 
Club, she gave herself to the promotion of his immediate in¬ 
terests, quite sure that they are right who say, in the success 
books, that great advancement is usually the sum of many 
small triumphs. While she thus looked to the future, history 
was preparing to turn a new page. 

For a generation America had been at peace with all the 
world. She had seen the Civil War veteran in his successive 
changes; first as a stoutish young citizen busy with homestead¬ 
ing or running for office or working on his father’s farm, then 
coming to the period when he was still capable of surprise at 
being able, out of his discharge papers and his Grand Army 
uniform, to get public office and a modest pension, and at last 
approaching old age; often querulous, often honestly aggrieved 
that his country had been so ungrateful to its saviours, and 
here and there becoming a not so innocent tool of politicians 
shrewder than himself. 

She had seen her navy rusting away through two decades 
after the Monitor’s sudden brief adventure in Hampton Roads, 
until a New York lawyer, becoming Secretary of the Navy, 
took it in hand and began to create the Great White Fleet. 
She had almost totally forgotten her army, except when an 
episode like Custer’s disastrous stand at the Little Big Horn 
or Nelson Miles’ pursuit of Geronimo or the exploit of the 
Seventh Cavalry at Pine Ridge Agency gave it a day’s brief 
innings of glory or of grief. 

To all appearances it was the hour of the nation’s least 
military mood. And yet in a day we went to war. There was 
trouble in Cuba, Spain’s last remaining colony in the Western 
world, but not many Americans gave it serious thought, and 
few, except army men, considered the possibility of hostilities 
between the United States and Spain. 

Then the Maine blew up in Havana harbor, and the circula¬ 
tion-mad newspapers of the great cities, still half-unaware of 
the high explosives which slumbered in the screaming head- 


SHODDY 


139 


lines of their new technique, shrieked an unwilling President 
and a sluggish, unwarlike nation into war. 

Bartelmy subscribed for a New York daily which was 
blatant with the new imperialism. He thrilled to a keener con¬ 
sciousness of his lately-acquired citizenship, and saw himself 
among the preachers of a modern crusade. “The White Man’s 
Burden” had definitely fallen on American shoulders. Bishop 
Berkeley’s “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way” 
assumed new significance with the despatch of Commodore 
George Dewey from Hong Kong to “find and destroy” Spain’s 
Asiatic fleet. The Oregon was racing home on her epic voyage 
around Cape Horn, to join the fleet in Cuban waters under 
Sampson. The movements of the Atlantic Fleet reflected the 
hysterics of the coast, which shivered in panic fear of a Spanish 
descent on undefended ports, anywhere and everywhere from 
Rockland Harbor to Key West. 

In that May of 1898, the Parkerville Memorial Day sermon 
fell to Bartelmy. At ten o’clock he stood with the throng which 
saw three companies of one of the first Kansas regiments 
march down Main Street to the cars which would bear the men 
to Chickamauga’s storied field, there to join the rest of the 
regiment and prepare for the invasion of Cuba. 

Then he went to his church, and, from its flag-draped pulpit 
he preached to the Grand Army Post, the Sons of Veterans, 
the Woman’s Relief Corps and a mixed gathering of other 
citizens—some of whom had just seen sons or lovers, husbands 
or brothers, march away—the crowning sermon of his Park¬ 
erville career; “What Mean Ye by These Stones?” 

It was a great effort. Everybody said so. Taking its text 
from Joshua, and its metaphorical stand by the long rows of 
soldiers’ graves in a national cemetery, reminders of America’s 
greatest war, it made the present war the noblest of the noble 
series. The United States could no longer maintain her an¬ 
cient and outworn isolation. She had gone unselfishly to the 
aid of little Cuba; but the resulting war, without any self- 
seeking on her part, would make her a World Power. When 
the inevitable victory had been won, she would be a messenger 
of Western civilization, that supreme flower of centuries of 
Christian culture. She would expand; but with her enlargement 
would go all the blessings of the Gospel and all the values 
of her interpretation of that Gospel in terms of education, 


140 SHODDY 

scientific progress, business prosperity, and Anglo-Saxon world- 
leadership. 

The Parkerville Democrat printed the sermon in full the 
next day, and Bartelmy became the leader of Parkerville’s 
more pious patriots. 

Peter, on the other hand, was distinctly out of it. He had 
no leanings to martial oratory; and, though he had few spe¬ 
cial convictions about the war, he hated with all his soul the 
pose of smug self-glorification with which the country went 
into it. He could find no excuses for Spain’s Cuban muddle; 
like most Americans, he knew little about it, except what the 
headlines told. He believed in a freed Cuba, certainly, yet his 
orderly mind sensed the fatuous blundering which marked the 
country’s preparation for Cuba’s deliverance. And even be¬ 
fore midsummer he was somewhat ashamedly relieved, for the 
nation’s sake, to think that his country’s foe was a bankrupt, 
fourth-rate monarchy. 

He made as little use of war themes as he well could, and 
no recruit could claim that he rushed from Peter’s reaching 
to the enlistment office. 


XII 

In the next summer, away off east in Tarrytown the quiet 
monotony of the Bailey home was broken at last by the only 
intruder that could have made any change in its routine. 
Father Bailey, steadily going to his day’s work at the boat¬ 
yard, came home one afternoon, and said, “I don’t feel any 
too well.” The next morning, when his wife woke, she found 
him still sleeping. Mrs. Bailey knew something was wrong, as 
indeed it was, for he did not wake again. 

After the funeral, and the first exchange of telegrams with 
Peter, the widow wrote to him to say that there would be some 
legal matters with which she needed help, and that she thought 
maybe Peter might come on east, when it was convenient, to 
do what was necessary, especially since the bit of money which 
they had always intended for Effie would now go to Effie’s 
child. 

Peter was not unwilling to think of the journey. The death 
of Father Bailey had touched his own hidden wound, and there 
came upon him again a hint of the restlessness which had sent 


SHODDY 


141 


him a-wandering when Effie’s loss had been only a matter of 
a few days. 

The managing editor of the Democrat, who had followed up 
Peter’s sermon on industrial justice by dropping in at his 
church now and then, heard of the contemplated eastern jour¬ 
ney. 

Dewey was coming home from the Philippines, and the 
Democrat could use some special dispatches from New York. 
There was no money to send a man. Middleton, he knew, 
could tell a story. 

He called Peter up. “You’re to be East, I hear, just when 
Dewey shows up. We want something special about it,—not 
the usual A. P. stuff. But we can’t afford a special corre¬ 
spondent, unless you’ll be it. We’ll give you credentials, get 
all the tickets you need, and meet your hotel bill. What do 
you say?” 

After raising a few not very vigorous objections, Peter said 
“Yes.” The prospect rather appealed to him. 

He had planned to make a stopover at Odessa on his way to 
Kansas City and the East. Two or three times since his ap¬ 
pointment to Parkerville he had been able to run up to the 
farm one day and back the next; but this time he spent three 
days with his parents, his infant daughter, and the rest of the 
Paint Creek family. 

Already baby Rhoda had begun to discern that this agree¬ 
able stranger who asked her to call him Daddy had some sort 
of special claim on her attention; and now she openly deserted 
and even flouted all her other admirers. Grandmother insisted 
that she knew well enough who Peter was. Peter thought that 
if she didn’t there were signs that she could learn, and he gave 
himself with zest to the business of teaching her. 

With Rhoda on his lap, asleep, or playing with the spoils 
of her explorations into his pockets, he and his father sat on 
the shaded south porch and exchanged the laconic confidences 
of men whose intercourse is deeper than understanding, com¬ 
plete respect and deep affection making automatic allowances 
for every difference of opinion and belief. 

It came to Peter that these parents of his had lived their 
lives. His father, long past work, had given up to his two 
younger sons, after he had sent each of them to the Agri¬ 
cultural College, the whole management of the farm. Mother 


142 


SHODDY 


Middleton’s quick, birdlike busyness was anything but the 
confident and capable thing it had been, though she seemed 
no less the complete housewife than of old. 

All this Peter saw or felt; and he knew that the changes 
now hastening must touch him directly, through his little 
daughter. At any moment the question of her care and train¬ 
ing might need to be entirely reconsidered. What could he do? 
How was he to begin the pleasant but unaccustomed and 
puzzling business of caring for her himself? 

He would not raise the question with his mother, except by 
the most careful indirection; for he saw how her heart was 
bound up in the child. But it was the one anxiety to which 
he turned again and again as he resumed his eastward journey. 

At Tarrytown he found Mother Bailey a woman patently 
unhappy; out of touch with life, though still hale and active. 
She had not moved from the little house bought when she and 
her husband came in from the farm. The other proceeds of 
that change, and the modest accumulations of a lifetime of 
thrift, she now wished to put into some form which would 
permit of relief from worry. There were bits of business which 
called for two or three visits to a steady old lawyer, and it 
was necessary to examine certain records in White Plains, and 
to consult a real estate man. Peter saw that his mother-in-law 
would have about five hundred dollars a year out of her various 
small funds. 

When they went over the figures for the last time she said, 
“Well, Peter, it may not be much, but we’ve lived on less in 
our time, and I don’t doubt it will serve my needs. Rhoda’s 
to have it when she grows up, you know. But there’s one thing 
I’m still troubled over, and you haven’t helped me with it. 
I’m not complaining about it, for it’s a great relief to have my 
business all shipshape, and down in black and white. But, 
Peter boy, I’ve nothing to do. I couldn’t be a lady if I tried, 
and five hundred dollars a year isn’t enough for that sort of 
thing, anyway you take it. Thirty years I’ve been a busy 
woman, with somebody always to do for, and maybe to scold 
a bit. Now I’m no use to anybody. Tell me what to do for 
that, and I’ll thank you more than for all the rest you’ve 
done.” 

To which Peter, by sudden, strange impulse, said, “Mother, 
it’s more than likely I’ve been as good as blind about you. 


SHODDY 


143 


Tell me, would you rather live in Tarrytown than anywhere 
else?” 

“Not I,” she said. “I’ve no kith nor kin hereabouts. And 
I want to live where I can keep from rusting out. If I stay 
here all alone I shall be dead of lonesomeness in a year.” 

“All right,” said Peter, his mind made up, “then I’ll pro¬ 
pose to you. It’s a selfish proposal, I know, but maybe you’ll 
think it has its points. How would you like to come west and 
live with me, and bring up Rhoda the way you brought up 
Rhoda’s mother?” 

She stared, incredulous. Then he told her of his own moth¬ 
er’s feebleness, of the changes already decided on at the 
farm, with the boys getting married and moving into their own 
homes; of his own need of a home, and of his daily increasing 
desire to have the baby with him. 

“Besides, Mother,” he said, “I want a home. I wouldn’t 
think of asking it if you were older, and worn, but you have 
years of activity before you yet. Come and let’s make a home 
together, you and I.” 

It was a proposal not new to Mother Bailey’s mind, though 
she had not dared to hope it would ever be made, and cer¬ 
tainly she would never have suggested it. But when Peter put 
it so straight and bold, she got up from her chair and came 
over to him. Her hands on his cheeks, she stooped and kissed 
him. “Peter, there’s nothing would give me more joy,” she 
said. “If your own mother won’t think me an intruder.” 

“I’ll answer for her,” he said, a trifle more confidently than 
he felt. “When she gets the boys fairly married we may have 
two grandmothers on call when needed. But my mother is 
older than you by fifteen years, and she’s getting to be far 
more willing than able.” 

So it was settled. Peter would go back West after his New 
York week was done, and would get things finished up for 
Conference. Then, after he had had a chance to talk things 
over at the farm, Mother Bailey should come out, first putting 
her house in the agent’s hands for rent or sale. 

In Peter’s eyes it was a great arrangement. He wanted 
Rhoda, but also he wanted somebody who could do for her 
the things no man could manage. And Effie’s dying desire 
was never to be forgotten. What though her ardent hope had 
leaped in an instant across all the long years of her child’s 


144 


SHODDY 


babyhood and schooling, to the day when she could take her 
mother’s place as her father’s helper? Even so, it was a vision 
which often gave him an almost prophetic comfort. 

XIII 

Peter’s three days in New York at the Dewey celebration as 
Tammany’s guest (thanks to the Democrat’s credentials and 
letters of introduction) were crowded with new sensations. He 
saw it all; the naval spectacle in the Hudson from a boat re¬ 
served for distinguished visitors, the land parade from a grand¬ 
stand straight across from Dewey himself and under the 
shadow of the great arch in Madison Square. 

He sent three dispatches to the Democrat , carefully follow¬ 
ing instructions as to subject matter, filing and all the rest, 
and his reports attracted far more attention than he suspected. 

When he got back to Parkerville he found that they had 
made something of a hit. Harper had featured them under 
the general head, “Dewey Days in New York; a Series of 
Letters from Our Special Representative, Pastor Peter Mid¬ 
dleton of Grace Church.” 

It was a common experience, in the first few days after he 
came home, for Peter to be stopped on the street by people 
whom he had never known, and told, “Those letters of yours 
were the real thing. Human stuff, you know. Why, I could 
almost believe I had been there myself.” Said one, “And that 
‘Dandy Seventh’ story was a corker!” 

Colonel Burlington asked him to lunch again, and this time 
it was almost a party, with a half-dozen of the city’s financial 
and legal lights to tell him how much they had enjoyed his 
reports. “Even,” as one of them said, “when you took a sly 
swipe at the childish ostentation of it all. Certainly, in a way, 
it was foolish; but we can’t very well do without that sort of 
thing after a war.” 

Peter tried to think that his report was as good as every¬ 
body had said, but soon gave it up. He had happened to be 
the man who had the chance to describe the celebration for 
Parkerville; that was all. 

But he was rather more grateful to Colonel Burlington than 
he would have been if he had overheard the talk after three 


SHODDY 


145 


of the men, back from the luncheon, had gone to the Colonel’s 
private room at the bank. 

“You can see,” he said to the others, “that we mustn’t just 
slaughter a boy like that. Has too much good stuff in him. 
He’s got to leave Parkerville, all right, because he’s learning 
more than is safe, just now. But I’m not such a conscience¬ 
less plutocrat that I’m willing to hurt him. The Methodist 
Conference meets within the next two weeks. The question is, 
where does he belong? And how can we get him there?” 

The man who had explained to Peter that celebrations like 
the Dewey reception were a sort of national safety-valve 
thought he might make a suggestion. 

“My son, Athelstan, is on the faculty up at College Park, 
you know. He writes me that the Methodist church there is 
open. Its pastor, Dr. Culbreth, a good old man who took the 
pulpit when he resigned from the presidency of the college 
to make way for the great geologist who is president now, has 
had a breakdown—no doubt his last. What do you think 
might be the chance of recommending Middleton to the Pre¬ 
siding Elder for College Park?” 

Colonel Burlington said, “It sounds like the very thing, 
Dailey. Long ago I learned that it is easier to get rid of a 
man by kicking him upstairs than by kicking him down, and 
College Park would be a real promotion for the boy.” 

But the third man, one of the directors of the glass works 
who had not quite recovered from being offended over Peter’s 
strike sermon, was not so sure. “Don’t you think it might be 
dangerous to send him where he can have a chance to influence 
so many young men from all over the state?” 

“Not a bit,” said Colonel Burlington. “He’ll influence them, 
no doubt of that; but why not? There isn’t a bit of danger. 
Why, we all know that Middleton’s more than half right, in 
theory; and it won’t be long before some of the ideas he has 
picked up will be common property. We’ll be putting them 
into law in a few more years. In the meantime, this young 
fellow will be getting some of our boys and girls ready, and 
if I’m not badly mistaken he’ll mix in so much of Christian 
stuff that the result of his work will be far less dangerous than 
what is being taught in some of the college classrooms.” 

“Suppose you’re right; what reason have we to think we 
can influence the authorities to make the change?” 


146 


SHODDY 


“Well/’ said the Colonel, “of course it is for the bishop and 
the presiding elder to say, after they have consulted the people 
at College Park. But we can make suggestions. And we know 
other people who can back up our recommendations. Your boy 
Athelstan, for instance, might talk the thing up at College 
Park, if you tell him about young Middleton. They need his 
sort in a college town. I’ll see our elder, who is a reasonable 
man, and we can write a letter to the bishop. Being an old 
Methodist, I know it is always taken for granted that a Meth¬ 
odist church is willing to lose its pastor if the change means 
something of advance for him. Funny, but it’s so. If that 
wasn’t the understanding, how could you explain why some 
churches work so hard to get their pastors made bishops? Even 
a college has been known to electioneer like a Republican in a 
Pennsylvania faction fight, to land its president in a bishop’s 
chair, though all the time the college rooters protest that the 
college never was so prosperous as it has been under his 
leadership.” 

Events proved the Colonel a student of men and things. 
The presiding elder having vainly looked through the con¬ 
ference from end to end to find a man available for College 
Park, was, as the Colonel had said, reasonable. Professor 
Dailey had worked up a petition in the church; and once more 
Peter found himself picked up by the Great Iron Wheel, and 
flung whither he had not chosen. Still, it is only fair to say 
that he was consulted more fully this time, and was urged, 
before the wheel tossed him from Parkerville to the new place, 
to go up to College Park and look the field over. Which he 
did, and was content. 


xiv 

Bart had a secret, shamed relief over Peter’s going from 
Parkerville. Mixed with it was something of resentment, that 
College Park should be a better appointment than his own. 
But the relief outlasted the jealousy. Not for a day since 
coming to Parkerville had he been wholly easy in his mind 
over the fact of Peter’s presence in the same town. 

One form which his concern had taken was an unreasoning 
reluctance about launching any large plans for his church. He 
had thought of them, by the score. All of one sort, pretty 


SHODDY 


147 


much. But almost unconsciously he tested them, while still 
amorphous, by speculations as to Peter’s quiet appraisal, when 
they should become known. Many an ambitious project he 
abandoned in the egg, scarce knowing why, but somehow sure 
that Peter’s comprehending scrutiny would see it small and 
cheap. 

Now he could branch out. He began to develop his penchant 
for putting other men’s ideas into new settings. He felt his 
way with a few programs for the Sunday School—recitations, 
songs, responsive readings, and such like gleanings, so ar¬ 
ranged as to develop a theme or work out a coherent order of 
exercises for some special service or other. 

It was a day when freshness had almost vanished from this 
species of religious literature, though still it was widely used, 
and Bart’s touch was at least not so hackneyed as that of 
the older practitioners in the field. Quite outrunning his first 
thought of the business, his flair for this sort of thing answered 
to a demand far beyond the confines of First Church. Under 
pressure of many requests, he experimented with half-a-dozen 
of the endless possibilities of the art, and with continued fa¬ 
cility. “Programs,” “Exercises,” “Displays,” “Services of Poet¬ 
ry and Song,” came easily to his hand. He made good use of 
remembered days at Thornlea, and turned out Americanized 
variations improved and modernized, on the Penny Readings, 
the Band of Hope dialogues, the “Services of Song,” and the 
Anniversary Services of his Wesleyan childhood. 

His reading of the current English periodicals on file in the 
Parkerville Public Library gave him one most valuable idea. 
Of late the fad of pageantry had spread over England, from 
Land’s End to the Tweed; the time was ripe, Bart saw, for an 
adaptation of that fad to American conditions. 

Bart saw this golden opportunity, and grasped it. The new 
word alone would almost do the trick. Instead of the con¬ 
demned and forbidden plays, with their smell of the stage, 
he gave to his little but ever-enlarging constituency a series of 
“pageants,” with “characters” instead of “actors” and “set¬ 
tings” instead of “scenery.” By paying lip service to the local 
gods of history, legend and tradition, by introducing such in¬ 
nocuous individuals as prolocutors and pageant-masters, and 
by dividing the production into episodes instead of acts, the 
curse of the footlight was avoided, and the younger folk, with 


148 


SHODDY 


many of the more active if older spirits in the women’s so¬ 
cieties, flung themselves into a new form of religious amuse¬ 
ment. It could not but be proper, since not only had it 
unselfish purpose, but evident and even certified purity of 
form and content. 

In those two years of his pastorate at Parkerville after 
Peter’s removal to College Park, Bart gained a practically 
Conference-wide reputation. No major Methodist gathering 
which could justify a pageant was complete without him. 

By the time Bart’s appointment was “read out” for Potta- 
wattomie, he had become one of the marked men of the Con¬ 
ference. The local paper in his new town spoke of him as “the 
well-known author of many cantatas, pageants and dramatic 
settings of church history.” “Author”, of course was used in 
its broader sense. Bartelmy claimed no originality for his 
output; merely that he had brought together the best he 
could find on the subjects with which he dealt. And, to do him 
full justice, even at Calder, no man had approached him in 
devotion to Foster’s “Cyclopedia of Prose and Poetical Quota¬ 
tions,” the “Christian Year,” and all the anthologies the library 
afforded. Since then, it had been merely a matter of broaden¬ 
ing and systematizing his gleanings. 

The Pottawattomie pastorate moved prosperously through 
three years or so. Then, on a day, a man of consequence in 
the denomination came to town—the secretary of one of the 
great benevolent agencies. He had heard of Bartelmy, and, 
for his own ends, he wished to sound him out. It had been 
easy to arrange through the presiding elder for a date when 
he might come to Pottawattomie in the interest of his cause. 
He had to be somewhere in the West that Sunday; and no 
secretary of his caliber had been in the town for years, if 
ever. 

He came. He made a most effective presentation of the 
cause he represented, and assisted in the raising of a really 
respectable collection. But when in later years he spoke of 
this visit he said nothing about his speech, nor about the 
people’s financial response. Rather would he tell how he saw 
at once that here was a young fellow he could use. In one of 
the departments of his organization there was need of just 
such a man. Since the palmy days of Charles H. Payne he 
had known of nobody, in any of the boards or out of them, who 


SHODDY 


149 


could do a thing he so much wanted his board to go in for— 
a combination of publicity, promotion, tract-production that 
should avoid the traditional, and a dozen other means of ap¬ 
proach to the church public through the printed and pictured 
page. 

Bartelmy sensed at once what the secretary wanted, and 
felt himself even more competent to provide it than he really 
was. The prospect of a better job stimulated his imagination. 
Viola, who had measured Bartelmy’s pulpit ability better than 
he knew, and who saw that he would not get ahead in the 
pastorate much faster than the speed of the Conference itself, 
a speed imposed by a sort of seniority rule on all but the ex¬ 
ceptional men, was all for the sort of change which this thing 
promised. Bart would make much faster progress when he was 
doing something for which he had evident capacity to excel. 
Since all concerned were in accord, it was easy for Bartelmy to 
become Publication Secretary for the Board of Special Philan¬ 
thropies. 


CHAPTER VI 


I 

Peter’s appointment to College Park could not have been 
better timed. His predecessor was a saint, absent-minded and 
impractically serene. What he did not wholly forget to see 
and hear, he saw in a suffused glow of natural goodness, and 
heard as a fragment of the song of the morning stars. He be¬ 
lieved that everybody was as free from the struggle against 
evil as himself, and equally concerned about the abstractions 
amid which he lived. 

College Park was ready for a complete revision of this 
saccharine conception of the pastoral function, and with Peter’s 
coming it got what it asked for. 

Much was to be done by way of organization; much ad¬ 
justment of the church’s creaking machinery; with constant 
demands on Peter’s skill in lubricating this or that point of 
friction. He took his time; was in no hurry to introduce 
novelties that might have gained for him a premature acclaim. 

In a few weeks the college was fully aware that a new 
preacher to students and their teachers had come to town. 
College boys and girls, in the Kansas of the opening century, 
were the sure barometer of a preacher’s acceptability. If they 
had fewer religious habits than the older folk, they had also 
more ease of movement. They could come to church or stay 
away with far less trouble than the established citizens. 

By the new year the church was straitened for room. And 
Peter’s Sunday School class of co-ed seniors filled the whole 
of the rear gallery. 

Mother Middleton had promised to visit Peter and Rhoda 
often at College Park. She went in the spring of Peter’s first 
year, and though she behaved bravely, her son’s solicitous eyes 
could see that the visit and its attendant excitements took 
toll of her small store of vitality. 

She and Baby Rhoda rejoiced exceedingly in each other, 
and Mother Bailey was consideration itself. But the old lady 

150 


SHODDY 151 

was ready to leave before the time set for her to return, and 
she was too frail to make the journey alone. 

At the farm Peter found another grief. Henry Middleton 
was still erect, and, to the unobservant eye, self-sufficient as 
ever, little worse physically than at any time these twenty 
years. But Peter knew he was not himself. He needed no 
word from Retha, though that devoted daughter took him 
aside, as soon as she could, and gave him details. At first 
Peter thought it might be chiefly that his father’s memory 
was at fault; but soon he could detect signs more ominous. 
The mind which had been like a cheerful hearth-fire, warm 
and glowing from whatever fuel it received, was at last un¬ 
able to deal with anything save its own dying embers. 

Just before he left he sat chatting with his father on the 
couch in the old book-and-newspaper cluttered sitting room. 
The shadows that hung about the old man’s brain seemed for 
the moment to lift a little and he spoke quietly of his end. 

“Peter,” he said, “I’d like to go. Something’s happened to 
me, and I’m done. There’s nothing in this waiting, that I 
should want it to last. Mother will likely slip away first, and 
I can’t think of living without her. She’s had a hard life, but 
she’s lived it well; and I should be worse than dead without 
her. I wonder if God has forgotten that my time is up?” 

Because Peter did not know what to say, he put his arm 
about the old man’s shoulders, and waited. This interval of 
clear-mindedness must not be spoiled. 

“I suppose the religion I’ve taken second-hand from you—” 

“Not from me, father 1 Nor second-hand, either. You got 
it where I did. And for us children’s sakes, as well as for all 
the other reasons, we don’t want your time to be up, and yet 
we don’t want you to suffer, either. It seems almost cruel that 
it must be one or the other.” 

“Not cruel, boy; just queer. But I’ve seen queerer things 
than that. And I’m waiting. But God knows that waiting is 
hard. There’s no sin in wanting to go, is there?” 

God had not forgotten about Henry Middleton. Before 
Peter had been back at College Park a week his brother called 
him one night over the long-distance wire. 

“Peter, come down on the first train. Mother’s almost gone, 
and Father wants that you should come right away. He asks 
for you.” 


152 


SHODDY 


Fred, with the farm’s best team, met Peter at the station. 
“Mother’s sinking. We’ll have to hurry if we find her alive.” 

The horses knew they must make time, and they made it; 
in fifteen minutes they drew up, steaming at end of the three 
mile drive. The two sons went straight to their Mother’s 
room, where the others were. 

The old woman heard them come in. As she looked feebly 
up into Peter’s face she spoke as though he had not been 
away. “Peter, I never told your father about giving you that 
money when you first went to college, and I want that you 
should tell him now. I think I should feel better.” 

Peter, his hand on her brow, turned to his father, sitting by 
him in the Morris chair. “Of course I’ll tell him. He’ll say 
it was all right. Won’t you, father? She gave me a hundred 
dollars.” - j 

The old man, as one called back from a journey, turned 
his face toward mother and son as he spoke. 

“I know more than any of you think,” he said. “I knew 
she wanted you to tell me. And I knew she gave you that 
money, ’way back yonder. I knew she would. I put an extra 
fifty dollars in the place where she hid her savings. She must 
have thought it was a miracle. It was. I meant to be hard, 
that time; and I couldn’t explain to myself why I put the 
money there.” 

A small thin hand came up from the bed and found its 
mate. As the old lovers clasped hands, Mother Middleton 
whispered, “I’ve always said you were the best man I ever 
knew. And I’ve always been proud of you, Henry. Kiss me.” 

It was their last kiss. As the old man straightened up again, 
the faintest of tremors passed over the thin little body in the 
bed, and the peace of death touched the wrinkled face. 

Her husband saw it, and cried out, “Why that’s the way 
she looked when I first courted her! ” And they led him away. 

He survived her less than a week. Since it had been seen 
that the interval would be brief, Mother Middleton’s body was 
held in the receiving vault of the Odessa cemetery, and in a 
few days more there was one funeral and one grave. 

Henry Middleton’s will was short, and contained only one 
surprise. It left all his possessions “to my dear wife Harriet, 
without conditions. In the event that I survive my wife, the 
property is to be shared among my four children, subject to 


SHODDY 


153 


such arrangements as they may agree on for Margaretha and 
Peter, in case it is decided that Oscar and Fred shall carry 
on the farm.” 

The unexpected paragraph read: “I hope that my wife, if 
she survives me, will make provision to carry out this, my 
great desire; but if I should survive her, the sum of two 
thousand dollars I direct to be set aside, before any other 
settlements are made, and sacredly kept for the use of my 
granddaughter, Rhoda Bailey Middleton, in the securing of 
her education.” 

Peter tried to object. But he did not get far before Retha 
checked him. 

“Father sent all of us to school but you,” she said. “He paid 
all our expenses, and he didn’t stint us. I had my chance at 
Standish and both Oscar and Freddie had their four years at 
the Agricultural College. Why shouldn’t he think of Rhoda?” 

“But Father did help me,” Peter protested. “It was only 
in my first two years at Calder that I had to support myself. 
And you remember he told us when Mother was dying how 
he tried to help me secretly, even then. Besides, I can take 
care of Rhoda’s education myself.” 

It was Oscar; slow, stolid, practical Oscar, the best judge 
of Poland Chinas and Herefords in all the Paint Creek Valley, 
who shut Peter’s mouth. 

“Yes, old man,” he said, “we know that. You get fair 
money, for a'preacher, and you’ll probably get more in a 
little while. You can take care of Rhoda, all right. But don’t 
forget this. Dad wasn’t just figuring on helping you to edu¬ 
cate Rhoda with this two thousand dollars. He was trying 
to straighten out a kink on his own record. None of us knew 
much of it at the time, but he was honest in being against 
your going to Calder College, and this is his way of saying 
that he knows now he was mistaken, and wants to make up 
for it. He would be hurt if you should refuse that money.” 

Peter had no words for such a view of it. After a minute he 
said, “Well then, I won’t refuse. Only, when the time comes, 
it will be up to me to see that he isn’t hurt by the use I let 
Rhoda make of his gift.” 


154 


SHODDY 


ii 

At College Park for the first time Peter felt that he could 
follow his bent. Long before he left they added an “L” to the 
church, and rejoiced that it was filled on every Sunday of the 
college year. Professor Athelstan Dailey and the other faculty 
men who happened to be Methodists gave him all the heartier 
support because of their five years’ immersion in Dr. Culbreth’s 
sweet and misty futilities. 

Peter, who by instinct repudiated the priestly theory of the 
ministry, nevertheless had been greatly drawn, from his first 
experience of it with Eugene Eberle, to the sacrament of the 
Supper. He had suffered keenly at its often crude, even bar¬ 
barous administration in churches large and small; he had 
knelt, humble and joyful, in a great cathedral-like church 
where every accessory of setting, music, lights, reverent cele¬ 
brants and devout partakers, enhanced the essential simplicity 
and significance of the rite. 

Not even a clumsy, mechanical or unseeing celebration could 
altogether spoil for him the fact that this was the Christian’s 
true Feast of Thanksgiving, nor might the most churchly and 
reverent atmosphere measurably increase for him its inner, 
living wonder. Though he was at the farthest possible remove 
from the dogma of the Real Presence, he found himself coming 
to a truer and self-confirming Christian experience through the 
ancient ceremony. His simple phrase for it was, “Sharing a 
meal with Christ and one another.” 

It was at College Park, too, that he began his distinctive 
evangelism. Through half the year, Sunday nights were Peter’s 
great dependence and anxiety. People who did not know him 
were quite sure he must be impossible as an evangelist; and in 
the conventional sense perhaps he was. But all through the 
six months, every Sunday night, he toiled at his evangelism; 
in highly irregular fashion, it must be said, but with results. 
His sense of Jesus Christ, always personal and immediate and 
ardent, drove him to seek every appeal which might kindle a 
like awareness in his hearers. And none he had used was so 
sure, so completely defensible and so constantly available as 
the Holy Supper, which he himself so reverently loved. 

On many Sunday nights, then, in the months of his directly 
evangelistic preaching, Peter arranged that the Table should be 


SHODDY 


155 


spread. He had shortened the ritual, with no loss of impressive¬ 
ness, saying to those who had objected to its brevity, “I am 
trying to save, not the ritual, but the man who needs that 
Christ should be made real to him. And how can any forlorn 
sinner better find his way to the Saviour than by this simple 
confession and fellowship, in the hour of his greatest hunger? 
Jesus made it simple for that very reason; if the rest of us 
provide fellowships for the penitent, w 7 e may cheer his heart a 
little.” 

It was during the last three of the six busy years at College 
Park that Peter’s old friend Bartelmy Bonafede had taken his 
first long step towards ecclesiastical greatness, and when, one 
Sunday near the end of his sixth year, Peter was doing his 
best not to be affected by the attention of a rather poorly- 
disguised committee looking for a pastor, it interested him not 
a little to be told that Bartelmy was an official member of the 
church they represented. 

However, six years was a long pastorate in those days, and 
with all his zest in the work at College Park, Peter felt that 
there must be some basic wisdom in the idea of “the itinerancy.” 
So he was not unwilling to be moved, when the committee, 
having returned from spying out its man, reported on him 
favorably. 

His transfer and appointment having been asked for, and 
the customary formalities having been observed, after confer¬ 
ence he came once more to a situation wholly new; he found 
himself pastor of Columbus Avenue Church, Iliopolis. Mother 
Bailey had died the year before, and for Rhoda’s sake he chose 
to live in the big parsonage, turning the management of the 
place over to a colored woman of sensible and competent habit. 

Though a city church in all its essentials, Peter Middleton’s 
new charge, Columbus Avenue, Iliopolis, was, geographically, 
suburban. All its people were of the city; some were rich, and 
none was very poor. Here was opportunity for much new ex¬ 
perience and knowledge; he had facilities for becoming familiar 
with aspects of Methodist ecclesiasticism such as he had not 
before faced. The city had a resident bishop, and it had enough 
churches to make it the premier city of its conference. Bar- 
telmy’s Society maintained its office in the city, as did one or 
two other but minor Methodist agencies. 

Among his fellow ministers in and around Iliopolis, Peter 


156 


SHODDY 


began to be rated successful, but queer. And to be considered 
queer was not altogether comfortable. He learned that the 
beatitude of the persecuted has few advocates and fewer 
devotees. 

Yet the men he admired and cared at all to emulate were 
small minority against whose names the conference watchmen 
were prone to set a question mark. For that reason he found 
large comfort in watching the career of his friend and student 
mentor at Calder. And well he might. Eugene Eberle’s rise 
is one of the epics of Methodism in this generation. 

Eberle, it should be kept in mind, has never fitted into the 
official scheme. But, going his own way, he has applied his 
peculiar gifts to the task of the moment with such apt adjust¬ 
ment of means to ends that officialdom has never been able to 
bring anything against him. The ready-made methods put to¬ 
gether in distant offices for long churches and short, churches 
fat and lean, churches wise and simple, and for a hundred vari¬ 
eties of Methodist pastor, have seemed by comparison with 
his carefully-adjusted work to be the output of a scarecrows’ 
tailor. 


hi 

When Peter went to Iliopolis, Eberle was pastor of a huge 
Tabernacle church in a great industrial city. That city had 
no other church like it, nor has any other city, if the records 
are trustworthy. Nor could the town boast another pastor like 
Eugene Eberle. How the man did his work no one could say. 
Being unmarried, he had no one to protect him from becoming 
the community’s beloved drudge. The labor unions no less 
than the Chamber of Commerce clamored for his attention, 
both groups with unnatural docility taking from him such 
caustic appraisal of themselves and their corporate behaviour 
as no preacher before him had dared to utter. 

The woman’s club of that region which left him off its win¬ 
ter program had to explain to its members. He was a welcome 
visitor at all the high schools, and a holiday club of the town’s 
captains of industry made him its permanent chaplain. 

If he was incisive above the ordinary, touching the sins of 
robust offenders, Eberle was gentler than the gentlest where 
grief kept company with pain, or where shame sought him out 


SHODDY 


157 


to make its confession with deep if unconventional penitence. 

The brethren of his conference gave him an affection 
strangely selfless. Nobody ever thought of including Eugene 
Eberle in those familiar conference groupings which are held 
together by reciprocal favors. In 1904 he had led his delega¬ 
tion in the General Conference. That was the year when, partly 
because of his deeper interest in other questions, and partly be¬ 
cause the second man cared very much about membership on 
the premier committee, Eberle had waived his right to choose 
the Committee on Episcopacy. But his waiver did not touch 
his leadership. That rested on qualities and abilities so obvious 
that it was mainly taken for granted, and even among men nat¬ 
urally jealous it excited scarcely the slightest trace of envy. 

Not merely the rank and file of his conference, but its most 
important men, were of one mind about the General Conference 
.of 1908. That body would elect Eberle to the Episcopacy. 
Other nearby conferences, and some more remote, shared this 
opinion and the desire out of which it grew. And yet nobody 
could assign the ordinary reasons. Least of all could anybody 
say that his conference was trying to get rid of Eberle by pro¬ 
moting him. Although he was a man with whom few could 
always agree, it would be hard to find in modern Methodism a 
man so implicitly trusted, as well by those who think him too 
progressive as by those who wonder why he does not take still 
bolder ground. 

In short, Eberle was—and is—that singular sort of Chris¬ 
tian, a man so attuned to reality and simplicity that the usual 
temptations of a minister in a material world touch him not 
at all. From his Calder days he has lived almost austerely. 
His personal needs are easily supplied and quickly forgotten. 

In his journeyings, Eberle frequently passed through Iliop- 
olis. From the station he would telephone Peter. On one of 
these days he said, “Eve got two hours between trains; can’t 
you come down and eat a railway restaurant meal with me at 
the counter? You know; as usual. I want to cheer you up 
about your new job.” 

Peter made good time to the station. These between-train 
visits were not frequent enough; nor, when they came, were 
they the sort of intercourse with Eberle for which his soul 
craved. But they had served to keep alive an intimacy he 
sorely needed; that was their complete justification. 


158 


SHODDY 


“I knew you would be discovered, Peter,” Eugene said after 
their brief and cheerful greeting. “And I knew why, as I 
have told you before. In our church, when a man is conse¬ 
crated clear to the center, and then puts all the sense and per¬ 
sistence and capacity for drudgery and imagination that God 
gave him, into a seven-day job, he’s a marked man. You’ve 
been doing that, right along. Even the machine knows it needs 
you.” 

“How do you know so much?” Peter asked, with a grin. 

“Oh, there are people who talk. I have just been at College 
Park, and out there they believe you saved their church from 
drying up and blowing away. You’ll have something different 
to do here. This church is too solid, if anything. I know 
Columbus Avenue a little, and my guess is that you’ll have to 
make real Christians out of a mixed lot of sales managers, de¬ 
partment heads, lawyers, bond brokers, club women, business 
women, and, in general, the top layer of Iliopolis Methodism. 
Good stuff, much of it; but it is too well satisfied with itself. 
Certainly it will say its prayers of repentance if you arrange 
them into a ritual and pick out the right hymns. But, on the 
practical level, it’s a stiff mixture of orthodoxy, complacency 
and worldly wisdom. You’ll have to jolt it now and then; 
only you are not much of a jolter. One thing I’ll prophesy; 
these people will take a lot from you because, for one thing, 
you have no illusions about the pastor’s authority.” 

“All that sounds nice enough, Eugene, old man; and some 
of it is not so far from the truth, if my first impressions can 
be trusted. But you don’t cheer me up as much as I thought 
you would. I’m thinking you’ve outlined a job that’s too big 
for me. But I’m here, and can’t get away if I wanted to. And 
I don’t; not yet. So I shall have to think a good deal about 
your diagnosis of Columbus Avenue.” 

“And of yourself, too, Peter. Don’t forget yourself, entirely. 
To me, it’s the combination that looks cheerful. You’ll get 
along.” 

Peter laughed a trifle consciously, and said, “I hope you’re 
right. But that’s enough about me. What about yourself? 
From all I hear, they’re going to make a bishop out of you. 
I’m for it, of course. We all are, who know you. But—do you 
mind?—are you? I think you ought to be elected. What I 
wonder is whether you think so, too.” 


SHODDY 


159 


“There’s a lot of talk,” said Eberle, “and it bothers me. I 
can’t dodge this thing; and, to be frank, I’m not trying. I 
believe in letting the church do its deed, and you know me well 
enough to take that exactly as it stands. But I can’t say that 
being a bishop looks like a prospect of paradise. If I should be 
elected, what then?” 

“Why, you’ll be a bishop by no fault of your own, and 
you’ll be a good one. Why not? What bothers you?” 

“Well, I don’t believe, for one thing, in what some people 
mean when they say the Episcopacy. I believe in our church 
taking hold of men—that it chooses to call them bishops is 
due to an accident—and assigning each man of them to the 
hardest work it can discover for the sort of man he is. There’s 
not much glory in that, except the hard work. And I’ve already 
seen that the tremendous power which we give a bishop is more 
than a heavy sword; it has two edges.” 

“Anyway,” said Peter, “I’m glad you don’t mean to turn 
away from an election. The church needs a man like you in 
the Episcopal board. And if you are elected, everybody will 
know, who knows anything, that you had nothing to do with it 
except by being yourself.” 

“What else can a man be, and stay at peace with his own 
soul?” 

“Sure enough. I remember that’s what I thought when you 
took me to your revival meeting at Blue Oak long ago. But 
there’s more to being yourself than just a phrase. Probably 
without knowing how or why you do it, you have almost forced 
other people, when they deal with you, to want to be as sincere 
as you are. I think that has a lot to do with the votes you’ll 
get next May. Everybody knows you’ll be everybody’s bishop.” 

“Leaving the Episcopacy out of it, Peter, don’t you believe 
that most people really prefer to be their best selves whenever 
they can manage it without too big a strain? The trick is in 
getting rid of the strain. Well; that’s what being a Christian 
means, to me;—having a religion that has become, not always 
easy, but second nature.” 


IV 

In his work with the Board of Special Philanthropies, Bar- 
telmy Bonafede really came into his own. Here he had periods 


160 


SHODDY 


of full content. He felt that he was doing as good work as 
anybody in his field, and better work than most. 

His output was prodigious. All he asked was a hint. He 
could produce a program at sight of a title. One department 
wanted a story for the Advocates, and another a booklet for 
local church workers, and another a program for the next an¬ 
nual “Day,” and another a scheme of posters or form letters 
or literature for a special financial campaign, or leaflets an¬ 
nouncing new plans and new activities in the office or in the 
field—it was all one to Bartelmy. 

Bart had another sure dependence, with practice becoming 
every year more of an adept at its use. He cultivated a ready 
and voluble orthodoxy, but, in its expression, he used the most 
modern phrases he could come by. It is the sure way to a 
reputation for being progressively conservative, or conserva¬ 
tively progressive, and Bart had not failed to notice that by it 
some held their place in the church, when others no more ad¬ 
vanced in opinion, but less adroit of speech, went suspect all 
their brief official days. 

He reaped the first harvest of his cultivation of the brethren 
in his Conference when, six years after going into the detached 
work, they elected him to the approaching General Conference. 
True, he was the low man of the delegation, but he was in. 
And, being in, he would not be so proud that he could not dis¬ 
cern certain possibilities in his assignments to important com¬ 
mittees. 

When the month of the great convocation dawned, Bartelmy 
Bonafede went humbly. Also he found ways of making him¬ 
self useful to the newspaper men, and to the secretarial staff 
of the Conference, and to the men of his own delegation, and 
even to a foreign delegate here and there. 

One outcome of this General Conference puzzled Bartelmy. 
At Calder he had known Eugene Eberle only as a queer stick; 
a student difficult of approach and not so very responsive when 
one did make an effort to be friendly. 

He had graduated when Bart was a sophomore, and of course 
everybody in the church knows of his steady rise to promi¬ 
nence. Within a dozen years he had become such a figure as 
Methodism produces once or twice in a generation,—a man 
widely known and sought after by all sorts of people outside 
as well as inside the denomination. 


SHODDY 


161 


And Eugene Eberle had been one of the four bishops elected. 
Not on the first ballot, certainly; the Eberle support was 
neither organized nor spectacular; but his vote grew steadily, 
until it crossed the difficult two-thirds line. Bartelmy could not 
explain it by analogy with any other election, nor with the 
methods of the most seasoned General Conference practitioners. 

Bartelmy’s repute once established, he labored mightily, but 
without too obvious anxiety, to strengthen and extend it. The 
books he needed, he bought. No collector or reviewer studied 
more assiduously the catalogues of old books or the advertise¬ 
ments of new ones. His choices had a wide and tolerant cath¬ 
olicity. An idea dug out of the Billboard or Printer’s Ink or 
Vanity Fair could be made use of just as well as if it had been 
found in the Homiletic Review; better, even, in that its source 
was not so likely to be known, and its bearing on Bartelmy’s 
scheme, whatever that might be, was likely to be more human 
and natural. 

And to Viola these years were also kind. Marcus demanded 
little of her time; Ellen Rector saw to that. Moreover, he had 
always been more than commonly self-reliant, and as he grew 
from babyhood to little-boyhood and then to school days, and 
to those grubby sorts of play which boys so strangely affect, he 
much preferred to be let alone. 

Though the Bonafede apartment was larger than Bart’s in¬ 
come really justified, Viola had selected it, and that was an 
end. She had never been small about money matters, and Bart 
did not know how much she spent beyond the monthly check 
he gave her from his salary. All he knew was that this check 
represented two-thirds of his income, and with it she was sup¬ 
posed to manage the house, paying all the bills, including his 
own. She saw that he went to a good tailor, and the cost of 
her own wardrobe might have been a shock to him; except 
that both he and Viola took care that he was not subjected to 
the risk. 

Viola was predestined to a Woman’s Club career. She had 
the clothes for it, and the leisure for it, and the instinct for it. 
Socially and mentally she belonged. From her father she had 
learned the elements of politics, which though differently ap¬ 
plied by women, must be pretty much the same for both 
sexes. She became a leader, first in the city, then in the state, 
then in the National Federation. 


162 


SHODDY 


Judge Dimont, by this time too old for politics, shrewdly ob¬ 
served Bartelmy’s progress. “I told you so,” he chuckled to 
Viola on one of her visits home; “that boy is doing just what I 
said he would. He watches his corners. He did it the first time 
I saw him, when he won in the oratory contest. He did it when 
he got me to Kansas City on his special train. He did it at the 
last General Conference, though he wasn’t much noticed. And, 
you hear me, he’ll do it again, many a time. I’ll see you a 
bishop’s wife yet, young lady. The Methodist Church will dis¬ 
cover your husband.” 

Whereat Viola only said “Maybe;” though in her heart she 
believed him; and turned her attention to what she conceived to 
be her share in the Bonafede program. Mrs. Dimont, who 
always missed the evidences of her husband’s genial cynicism 
and her daughter’s calculating practicality, said, “Don’t you go 
putting such nonsense into their head, Judge. But it would be 
sort of nice if it should happen, wouldn’t it?” 

Mrs. Dimont’s ignorance of the process whose result she en¬ 
visaged could not have been more complete; but evidently her 
heart was in the right place. As for Bartelmy, he knew only 
that he would do what he could to help the church discover 
him, if and when it might be looking for men of his quality. 

He neglected none of the devices, and applied all of the for¬ 
mulas, which are dear to Methodist climbers. Once or twice he 
thought he had invented a new one, but that came of his inabil¬ 
ity to know all the climbers. There are no new schemes. 

v 

And the signs were almost all favorable to his hopes. Omen 
followed propitious omen with cumulative results. His confer¬ 
ence recognized his growing influence, and, on the principle 
that influence breeds influence, it added the one almost indis¬ 
pensable weapon to his armory; it elected him to the next Gen¬ 
eral Conference at the head of the delegation. 

This, in Methodism, is much more than a mere coming out 
at the head of the voting. Automatically it carries with it the 
chairmanship of the delegation in the General Conference, and, 
by long custom, membership on the most conspicuous committee 
of that body, the committee on Episcopacy. To Bartelmy the 
distinction would be doubly useful. Apart from its direct per- 


SHODDY 


163 


sonal values, it gave him larger opportunity to further the am¬ 
bitions of his chief, the man who had lifted him out of his Pot¬ 
tawattamie obscurity into the place where he could set about 
making people aware of him throughout the connection. 

As many other men have wanted it, and will always want it, 
so Dr. Dalkeith desired the Episcopacy; not only for its own 
sake, but because he had grown somewhat weary of his present 
exacting office. That he supposed being a bishop would be less 
exacting is not likely; nor even that he felt peculiarly equipped 
for its often thankless duties. The reasons which lie back of 
such ambitions are never as simple as they sound, and rarely are 
they stated with entire frankness, even by the aspirant to him¬ 
self. 

The situation created by Dr. Dalkeith’s ambition was made 
to order for Bartelmy’s genius. He took on himself, with no 
formal request that later might be embarrassing to anybody, the 
direction of the Dalkeith campaign. He organized the entire 
staff of the Dalkeith office into a corps of sentiment-creators 
and vote-hunters. He made shrewd appraisal of those direct 
or indirect beneficiaries of his society’s activities who had been 
elected to General Conference, and saw to it that no man of 
them all forgot to do his duty. 

At the General Conference of that year many other things 
happened, but the first event of importance to Bartelmy was 
the promotion of his chief. Dr. Dalkeith was elected, though 
with much effort and after long uncertainty. Before the ballot¬ 
ing could begin, it was necessary that the conference should 
decide on the number of bishops to be elected, and this in turn 
depended on the number of vacancies in the Episcopal Board, 
as well as on the number of new residences to be ordered, if any. 

From his place in the Committee on Episcopacy, Bartelmy 
gave himself to the furtherance of two enterprises;—the addi¬ 
tion of one new residence, and the retirement of a bishop who 
was well under the usual age of retirement, but whose record 
in administration had occasioned no small criticism. Bartelmy 
was careful not to advocate the bishop’s shelving. Many 
delegates were outspoken for that. Some of these had been ag¬ 
grieved by his official acts, and were bluntly for declaring him 
non-effective. On the other side, men recognized his really use¬ 
ful qualities, and insisted that no bishop ought to be retired 
merely on the demand of men who had personal grievances. 


164 


SHODDY 


It was Bartelmy who proposed the expedient which was 
adopted. Said he in the committee, “No one of us desires to 
take the responsibility of saying that Bishop Valentine is in¬ 
effective. And yet we cannot entirely ignore the objections which 
have been made to his official conduct. Since, in the last analy¬ 
sis, the General Conference is the real arbiter, I suggest that we 
present the bishop’s name for conference action on his effective¬ 
ness, without recommendation.” And it was done, by a com¬ 
mittee which, in the main, suspected nothing. 

Now Bartelmy had guessed that the men who actually wanted 
to strike back at the bishop by voting for his retirement were 
in the minority. But he was sure that others would vote with 
them, some from a sort of second-hand prejudice, some from a 
sincere belief that the bishop’s usefulness was at an end, and 
not a few for the reason which was in the back of his own mind. 
The more vacancies, the more chances for every candidate. 

His judgment was borne out by the event. Bishop Valentine, 
by a secret ballot of the whole General Conference, was put on 
the retired list, to his own amazed but fruitless indignation. 
When the Conference also ordered the fixing of a new Episcopal 
residence, without discontinuing any of those already estab¬ 
lished, another door of hope opened before many aspiring 
brethren. 

Even so, when the actual voting for bishops began, it took 
nine ballots to get other candidates out of the way—up or down 
—before Dr. Dalkeith had his chance, and several times Bar¬ 
telmy would have given up in despair, if he had been no more 
than the manager of the Dalkeith campaign. 

But the delay was also his salvation, as he discerned at the 
last. More than once, Dalkeith’s vote dropped so low that re¬ 
covery seemed impossible, and quite low enough to discourage 
anybody from coming out into the open as a candidate for his 
secretarial office. There is a practical etiquette of such things. 

Meanwhile Bartelmy was instant in season and out, strength¬ 
ening this combination, suggesting that, reassuring the faint¬ 
hearted, bargaining with the tough-minded, doing his utmost to 
head off the introduction of new Episcopal candidates and the 
re-entry of old ones. He was like a spider whose far-extended 
web is threatened as much by the vagrant wind as by overt 
enemies. 

Viola threw her talents into the common stock. She saw her 


SHODDY 


165 


chance to help, and she knew how to supplement her husband’s 
labors as she had supported her father’s. Her role was that of 
the lovely lady who, though prominent in Woman’s Club work, 
knows nothing whatever about politics, but who delights in 
bringing congenial women together in the intervals of the con¬ 
ference sessions. 

At the headquarters hotel, every afternoon, the Bonafede 
suite was full of quiet and well-bred activity. The wives of dele¬ 
gates agreed that it was a far better place in which to meet the 
right people than the public lobby downstairs. Mrs. Bonafede 
was charming, and you were away from the endless milling- 
around of the chronic greeters. While there was much chatter, 
and a gentle sound of spoons and teacups—the tea was Bar- 
telmy’s innovation, and proved effective—one could hear one’s 
self speak. 

The women delegates who dropped in during the intervals 
of committee work found it a haven of rest. Viola saw to it 
that nobody talked shop to them; the initiative must be their 
own; but she could listen attentatively as well as sympathetic¬ 
ally, and she was often able to pass on to Bartelmy the hint 
that some special thoughtfulness in a certain quarter would bear 
fruit in a useful bit of gratitude. 

It was anything but easy work for either of them, and Bar¬ 
telmy paid part of the price in the few hours of each twenty- 
four when he and Viola were alone together. But he had learned, 
as much as a man'may, how to cushion the jar of his wife’s 
reaction to weariness. For himself, irritability was out of the 
question. In his early years he had been sharply disciplined 
against indulgence in that luxury; later, when he was free to 
choose good or evil, he decided that he could not afford nerves. 
His long habit of self-control was one of Bonafede’s greatest 
assets. 

When at long last the Dalkeith vote suddenly shot up¬ 
ward and slipped safely over the two-thirds line, it carried with 
it the one remaining man to be elected bishop. And the day was 
Saturday; that meant there was little time left of electioneering 
among candidates for other offices. Bartelmy knew that the 
consecration service must come on Sunday, and that the Con¬ 
ference would hurry on Monday to the elections of secretaries 
and editors, for the last days of the session drew near, and 
everybody would be wanting to get done and go home. So he 


166 


SHODDY 


felt reasonably sure that there was slight danger of any suc¬ 
cessful foray on his preserves. 

Naturally he expected a race; and it was no surprise to him 
that on Saturday afternoon two men were announced in the 
lobbies and on the streets as candidates for Dr. Dalkeith’s post. 
But they came belated, as he well knew. Bartelmy’s name and 
person had been too long in the thought of the delegates. True, 
few had openly championed his cause, and he had asked for 
nothing. But neither his fitness nor his “moral” claim, as Dal¬ 
keith’s most effective assistant, could be overlooked. It was said 
of him generally that he was the logical candidate, and one dele¬ 
gation pleased him greatly by coming to him in a body and ask¬ 
ing the privilege of nominating him. 

His chances could not have been better. The Dalkeith 
strength, of course, was his, and this meant even more than the 
support of a retiring secretary, for the retiring secretary was to 
become a bishop. A new bishop’s influence is a beautiful ex¬ 
ample of metamorphosis. Yesterday he who is now a bishop 
was a mere chrysalis of the Episcopacy, unglamorous, merely a 
would-be bishop; and nature, prodigal here as everywhere, al¬ 
ways considering the possibilities of frustration, provides far 
more embryos than can come to maturity. Today he is a 
Purple Emperor, brilliant with all the gorgeous potentialities of 
the general superintendency. 


VI 

Thus by Monday night another goal was reached in the prog¬ 
ress of Bartelmy Bonafede; for, as compared to the struggle 
over his chief, his own election was a swift and easy triumph. 
He could not deny himself a moment in which he might roll 
under his tongue the sweet morsel of this achievement. He, 
Bartelmy Bonafede of Thornlea, shoddy-bom and shoddy-bred, 
immigrant, office boy, hired hand, country school-teacher, poor 
but industrious student, now by the choice of a great church had 
become executive secretary of its Board of Special Philanthro¬ 
pies, charged with the administration of a budget that would 
run into millions, and in control of men and institutions not less 
important than those of the largest Episcopal assignments. 

All of this he rehearsed to himself, and to no other, though 
he spoke more freely of it to Viola that night in their room than 


SHODDY 


167 


was his wont. And, to his great delight, she was unusually re¬ 
sponsive. She felt that this was a time for such gracious wife¬ 
liness as she could display to distracting perfection when she 
chose; so that for the moment Bartelmy the successful contriver 
of his own fortunes was completely lost in Bartelmy the ardent 
and enraptured lover. Her frank pleasure in his new impor¬ 
tance flattered him no less because he realized the next morning 
that she had been thinking quite as much of her own ambitions, 
and their approach to realization, as of his own. He was too 
happy in his election, and in her special favor, to begrudge her 
that luxury. There was glory enough for both. 

Bartelmy as a department head had contracted a zeal for 
industry, but Bartelmy as executive secretary of a great Board 
became a truly prodigious worker. 

The headquarters in Iliopolis had been established a few 
years before, and on a quite modest scale. The Middle West 
had not yet learned to think of itself as the great treasure 
land of Methodism. For ecclesiastical leadership it still looked, 
though with steadily diminishing subservience, to the East. 

But with Bonafede’s coming into full executive power the 
offices of the Board of Special Philanthropies buzzed with 
new activity. He persuaded the Board to make appropriations 
for an enlarged staff, rented more space, and prepared to lead 
to the conquest of new worlds—for the glory of the church 
as represented by his particular Board. 

This organization had become, through successive adjust¬ 
ments, a sort of omnibus of philanthropies and church work. 
Many and only slightly-related activities were under its care. 
It had authority to encourage and aid in the expansion of 
varied Methodist enterprises. Not always did it provide the 
funds, but it was permitted to furnish as much moral support 
as it thought proper, and to supplement this, in carefully de¬ 
fined circumstances, with loans or grants of money. 

Under Secretary Bonafede all its work began to effloresce, 
primarily in an array of reports and surveys—statistical, com¬ 
parative, graphic, pictorial—the like of which had never been 
seen in the denomination. What came today in a letter from 
the field tomorrow reappeared in a tabulation or a chart. If 
it promised to be especially striking it came to its full glory in 
a stereopticon slide, gorgeously colored. And the secondary 


168 


SHODDY 


outcomes of it all—are they not writ large in the life of the 
Methodist churches of the time, and even until now? 

That Peter Middleton should be Bartelmy’s pastor during 
such a time as this was as little of Bartelmy’s seeking as Peter’s. 
Peter had come to Iliopolis while yet Bartelmy was a subordi¬ 
nate under Dr. Dalkeith, fully occupied with his dual task of 
promotion-expert and campaign manager for his chief. And, 
anyway, Bartelmy had little contact with Peter or his church, 
for his duties took him away almost every Sunday. 

Even in the first few months of his pastorate it was evident 
that neither Peter nor Bartelmy need have any concern that 
they were both officially related to the Columbus Avenue 
church. The Bonafede home was really outside the parish, and 
Viola, in the beginning of their life in Iliopolis, had found a 
congenial group ot women in a more easily accessible church; 
“smaller,” she said/ “but much more select.” Undoubtedly 
there were fewer women of importance, zealous of their long¬ 
time prerogatives, in Summerfieid church. When Bartelmy be¬ 
came secretary, the Summerfieid people saw his increased value 
to them, and made it easy for the Bonafedes to stay. That 
Peter was pastor of the other ci ■’rch had no little to do with 
Bartelmy’s acquiescence. 


VII 

Iliopolis has a High School, well out from the business dis¬ 
trict, to which even Iliopolis, though it has several high schools, 
points with special pride. Here are all the modernities per¬ 
taining to the most modern American High Schools. 

It was soon after the beginning of the fall semester. Be¬ 
tween classes freshmen halted as they came through the long 
hall, and gathered in little clusters about the bulletin board on 
which the class roll was posted. Each day brought new knowl¬ 
edge of their classmates, gained in the recitation rooms and 
study halls, and they liked to check up on names. Besides, 
they must soon organize, and it was important that they should 
know who was who. 

A chunk of a girl, slightly under the medium height, with 
dark brown hair and a face not unpleasantly freckled, her 
mouth perhaps a trifle wider than it need be to accord with her 


SHODDY 


169 


other features, moved in close enough to touch on the arm a boy 
who stood with the group at the board. 

“Excuse me, but aren’t you Marcus Bonafede?” 

The boy blushed. Marcus blushed too easily, his mother 
said, who always had her own blushes under control, even in 
the days when girlish blushes were highly thought of. He was 
of paler coloring than the girl; slender, and tall for his fifteen 
years. 

Said he, as he looked down at her, “Why, yes; that’s my 
name;” and waited. He had not found many friends as yet; 
scarcely a dozen people had spoken to him. His somewhat 
solitary childhood had given him little skill in the touch-and- 
go associations of more normally brought up boys. But this 
girl who had so easily addressed him—by no amount of taking 
thought could he have matched her poise—seemed so friendly 
that he almost forgot how unusual the experience was. 

“I thought you were,” said she; “Dad told me what you 
looked like. I’m Rhoda Middleton. Your folks and my folks 
were in college together in Kansas, so we’re sort of acquainted 
already. What school did you come from to Alexander Moore 
High?” 

It did not take long for each to become possessed of all 
those facts which high school freshmen find it necessary to 
know when exchanging confidences. They discovered that 
Marcus had been born in Kansas and Rhoda in Chicago. They 
reminded each other that Rhoda’s father was pastor of Colum¬ 
bus Avenue, and that Marcus was the son of Secretary Bar- 
telmy Bonafede. Marcus had heard that Rhoda had never 
known her mother, and Rhoda learned a little, but only a little, 
about Marcus’s mother, except that she was beautiful and 
usually busy with her club work. 

Then they found that they had interests in common. Marcus 
admitted to being fairly good at making toy aeroplanes, in 
that day just beginning to be quite a respectable vocation, 
even for high school boys; and Rhoda confessed that she’d 
rather fuss with tools and sail a boat—she had spent two sum¬ 
mers at Lake Geneva,—than bother with needles and thimbles 
and cook books. Also, he was learning to use the typewriter 
his latest birthday had produced; not merely its mechanism, 
but its stimulus to a half-awake faculty in the back of his head 
somewhere. 


170 


SHODDY 


Cook books having been somehow mentioned, Marcus started 
to speak, hesitated, almost blushed again, and then boldly- 
asked, “Can you make fudge?” 

“I can eat more than my share, Dad says, but I’ve never 
had any luck at making it. I’m not careful enough.” 

Whereupon Marcus observed, with an effort at careless ease, 
“You may think it’s a sissy business, but making fudge is one 
of the best things I do. I’ll show you, some day.” 

From so casual a beginning there came into being one of 
those youthful comradeships which now and then spring up at 
the least auspicious age, in the years when most boys and girls 
are mutually and scornfully repellent. 

It weathered the difficult days of the freshman year, for 
Rhoda immediately found a way of forestalling unpleasant 
comment over so conspicuous a disregard of the freshman code. 

To a girl who said, “Rhoda, why do you make such an awful 
fuss over that Bonafede boy?” she replied, “Who? Marcus? 
Don’t be silly. Why, his folks and mine are almost kin. Our 
fathers were roommates at college, and we’ve known of each 
other ever since Dad and Dr. Bonafede were pastors in the same 
Kansas town. I’ve about decided to adopt him for a brother, 
seeing that I haven’t got any. Brothers can be pretty useful. 
And when the time comes, I’m proposing him for election to 
Moore Gravy l 1 * 

At any rate, there was no more freshman objection to the 
partnership between Rhoda and Marcus. By the time it be¬ 
came familiar, it was taken for granted, as much queerer things 
are. As the year went by, it developed advantages which the 
class could turn to its own profit. For these two were full of 
resource, and not afraid of taking pains. In the school paper, 
Moore Gravy , for one thing. Marcus had one year as editor; 
but a cheerfully whimsical humor in his copy showed to best 
advantage in Moore Gravy’s signed column, “The Gravy La¬ 
dle.” He was one of the first of what is now a long line of 
high school and college philosophers. 

VIII 

A few Methodist preachers of Iliopolis and its environs had 
a habit of coming together three or four times a year, with 
no purpose but indulgence in good talk. They found genuine 


SHODDY 


171 


recreation in the free give and take which is the mark of any 
true ministry in its hours of relaxation, and which is not easily 
come by in the hurly-burly of conference week. They called 
themselves the Fleming Circle, in honor of a rare-souled col¬ 
league, too early broken by unresting labors. 

It was in Peter’s sixth year at Columbus Avenue that the 
Fleming Circle held its annual “country” meeting in and about 
the little church at Morningdale, twenty miles east of Uiopolis. 
This meeting, among more sophisticated ministers, would prob¬ 
ably have been called a “retreat;” to men of the Circle it was 
just a meeting, save that it was held at a point remote from 
their parishes, that it continued for two days, and that the 
time was about equally allotted to discussion, devotion and a 
sort of open-air lounging during which some of the debating 
went on with undiminished zest. 

. Much incipient and inquisitive heresy appeared in these 
meetings; not spoken in whispers and fearfully, but openly de¬ 
clared. Here was one place where there could be nothing to 
fear. The Fellowship met under an unwritten law that no man 
should be quoted, or called to account, elsewhere, for what he 
might say here. 

Peter, being appointed to lead the talk on the first afternoon, 
plunged into the subject of church-controlled social, charitable, 
and educational work; he had long been brooding on it. 

He started by telling of his increasing interest in the theme, 
and of queer ways in which various experiences had contributed 
to the intensifying of that interest. 

“We have all heard of the Chicago World’s Fair,” he said; 
“some of us saw it, and will never forget it. In the Fair year 
and the next, a most eccentric and pushful English journalist 
visited Chicago; William T. Stead, of the London Pall Mall 
Gazette. He went down in the ‘Titanic,’ you may remember. 
When he was in Chicago he went slumming, as well as to the 
Fair. After his second visit he wrote a book, ‘If Christ Came 
to Chicago.’ I’ve been reading that book again this week. It 
was written twenty years ago, and it is strangely ahead of its 
time. What’s more, it is much ahead of ours. It has some of 
the very ideas I think we must be feeling after; the city as a 
cherishing mother to the young, the sick, the poor, the tempted, 
the handicapped; the idea of Alma Mater enlarged, so as to 


172 


SHODDY 


take in the state, as well as college and church; making it in¬ 
clude the whole community. 

“Why should not the community take over those social 
duties and services which the church assumed when there was 
no state, no nation; when the church controlled the community 
more nearly than it can ever do it again? That was Stead’s 
thesis. 

“Soon after I came to Hiopolis, I made a chance visit to the 
State Tech. Fellows, that simply knocked me over. My own 
college, Calder, out in Kansas, is a small affair, as colleges go. 
Some of you are small college men, and you know what it 
means. I happened to be at Tech when the big financial cam¬ 
paign for our three Methodist colleges in this state was put on. 
The President of Tech is a Methodist, and it was by his 
courtesy that the banquet at which the campaign was launched 
was served in the gym. 

“Honest, it would have seemed to me a huge joke, except 
that it was too expensive to be funny. There we were, trying 
to set up a three-year effort to get a little endowment for three 
schools—a quarter million apiece—so that each could add to 
its income something like twelve or fifteen thousand dollars a 
year. And the great school whose guests we were, with as 
many Methodist students as any two schools of the three we 
sought to help, had just been given by the legislature eight 
hundred thousand dollars for its current expenses! That was 
Methodist tax money, some of it, appropriated to the educa¬ 
tion of our own young people; and for Tech it was income, 
while we Methodists in our organized capacity were beginning 
a strained, wrenching effort to collect a smaller amount, not 
for current needs, but for endowment! 

“I figure that the state is spending on Methodist boys and 
girls at Tech at least five dollars to every one we spend in the 
church's own schools. Everything the state does is of the best 
and the amplest; the one thing we know it can’t do better than 
the colleges of the church is organized religious work, which, 
naturally, it can’t do at all. Oh, yes; I know about the im¬ 
measurable influence of Christian teachers, and I value it more 
than I can say; but it wasn’t always to be had, even in the 
Calder of my time, nor in the Northwestern of yours, Jim 
Weatherley. And it isn’t wholly absent, I judge, at Tech. I 
know about the objections to big classes, and the lack of per- 


SHODDY 


173 


sonal touch between faculty and students, and all the other 
limitations of a state school. But they are not inherent in the 
idea of state control; you may find the same limitations at 
Syracuse and Boston and Southern California. 

“I know, too, that we shall have the church college, and the 
not-so-very-church university, for a long time yet. But they 
told me at Tech, which is only one of many state schools, where 
our Methodist youth abound, that the enrolment includes over 
eight hundred Methodist students; and not the least intelli¬ 
gent students on the campus, either. The local Methodist 
church would be swamped if it tried to take them in. The 
pastor is busy enough with his town flock, and the building is 
remote from the campus. All of which amounts to saying that 
the Methodist students can’t be fitted into the town church’s 
life. 

. “I’ll tell you what; if ever I lose my job at Columbus Ave¬ 
nue, I don’t know anything that would tempt me so strongly 
as the dare to tackle a job like that. When I was at College 
Park, out in Kansas, I thought I saw what a man could do if 
he really cared about students and had no other people to be 
responsible for.” 

The discussion went far afield. It took in the whole range 
of church activities outside the walls of the local church, as 
well as some of those which are carried on inside. Some men 
stoutly insisted that no church ever had prospered without the 
benevolent and other eleemosynary outlets for its Christ-in¬ 
spired impulse to serve. 

After the first rush of comment there came the usual pause. 
Then the informal debate found its second wind. One of the 
men set everything going again by saying, “Has anybody 
taken the trouble to wonder why Middleton thinks this way, 
and why some of us, as we listened to him, wanted to think as 
he does?” 

To which his neighbor replied, “Why, it seems plain enough 
to me. Middleton is one of our forward-looking preachers; 
isn’t that enough?” 

“Not for me,” said the first. “I’m not interested in your 
Locksley Hall stuff, nor in H. G. Wells’ trick of inventing a 
brand new Utopia for every new publishing season. Where 
Middleton got me—and himself, too, or I’m a poor guesser— 
was in his suggestion of an immense release for the church 


174 


SHODDY 


if it could ever be rid of its dependence on the big money. 
How about it, Peter; am I right?” 

“Well,” said Peter with a dry laugh, “you might be a worse 
guesser. The church is not different from other institutions 
which need what you call the big money. It must go where 
the money is. And that makes it watch its step at the very 
moment when there may be need for daring.” 

“Sure thing,” said another preacher. “You remember that 
time when Dr. Bonafede wrote to the Advocate about Bishop 
Fitzwilliam’s speech at the Methodist Men’s Congress? Its 
effect, he said, would be to alienate some of our most generous 
laymen and seriously affect our benevolent income. I clipped 
that letter; got it yet.” 

And the guesser assented, “We all remember that. And I 
remember thinking, when I saw it in the Advocate, of Paul’s 
words in his letter to Titus—or was it Timothy?—about those 
who are minded to be rich falling into temptations and snares 
and foolish and hurtful lusts; I’m not quoting exactly; never 
could; but you know the place.” 

“Yes, of course,” said Peter; “but we shouldn’t blame the 
secretary over much. He’s like a man with a big family and 
small wages—he’s got to see, somehow, that his brood is fed, 
and necessity has a great influence over conscience, with all of 
us. Dr. Bonafede can’t help thinking anxiously about the 
long list of activities for which his Board is responsible. Could 
any of us, in his place?” 

“We don’t seem to realize,” said the brother who had first 
stirred up Jim Weatherley, “that Dr. Bonafede is doing what 
circumstances won’t let all of us do—he’s making his job con¬ 
stantly bigger. That’s his way of adding to his own importance. 
It is needful that people shall think him indispensable. You 
wouldn’t want him to saw that limb off while he was perched 
on it, would you?” 

“To leave out personalities,” said Peter, “the question we’ve 
no more than raised here today may be really one of decen¬ 
tralizing the church. So long as we have these great groups of 
institutions, we shall need a tight and closely-graded organiza¬ 
tion; every officer must use the weight of his office to get re¬ 
sults from those under him, and from the church at large. We 
shall put more and more direct responsibility on our bishops; 
soon they will be practically in charge of dioceses. Naturally 


SHODDY 


175 


they will want to make records for success, which they will 
interpret as efficiency; the pressure will come on to the district 
superintendents, who will pass it on to the preachers, who will 
work more and more to a pre-arranged and regimented pro¬ 
gram. We shall have more experts, more traveling cheer-lead¬ 
ers, more records, stenographers, meetings, campaigns. We 
shall be guided, not perhaps from above, but from overhead.’’ 

As a rule, little came of these Fleming Circle discussions. 
The men enjoyed them, and went back to their parish work 
with a sense of having been somehow refreshed; that was about 
the sum of it. Happily, the Circle had a Medes-and-Persians 
rule against adopting resolutions. 

But this time something more did come of the talk. It had 
given Jim Weatherley a genuine scare. Jim was a lover of 
programs, schedules, “team-work,” and all such concerted activ¬ 
ity. He liked to be told what to do next. In his distress Jim 
broke the unwritten law of the Circle; he talked to an out¬ 
sider. If he had any qualms of conscience, he quieted them by 
the thought that a man in Dr. Bonafede’s place, with all his 
heavy responsibilities, ought to know what was being said, when 
it came so close to all his work. So he sought an opportunity 
to see Bartelmy, and told him the whole story of Peter’s 
speech. 


IX 

Any Methodist preacher of ten years’ standing has developed 
at least the beginning of a sixth sense. He can tell, he knows 
not how, when a vague unease first touches a few of his people, 
and makes their minds receptive soil for the baleful sowings of 
the disaffected brother—or, often, sister—who will shortly be 
wondering if the time has not come for a change of pastors. 

This subtle feeling of mild alarm—if it was as much as that 
—came to Peter Middleton toward the close of his sixth year 
at Columbus Avenue. Finances were not quite up to grade that 
year, for well-understood local reasons; and there was a new 
church treasurer, a man whose early Methodist training and 
associations had been among a technically pious but hard- 
minded folk. The church has always had them. Witness 
Daniel Drew. And Boss McKane of Brooklyn. 

This brother, Elting by name, confronted at the end of the 


176 


SHODDY 


year with bills which could not all be paid at once and in full, 
from the funds in hand, managed to pay more of them than 
anybody had expected. It was an exploit that called for ex¬ 
planation. 

The explanation appeared at the last official board meeting 
of the year, on the very eve of Conference. The treasurer re¬ 
ported that most of the bills were paid. Casually enough, and 
all unsuspecting, the Sunday School Superintendent remarked, 
“Of course, that includes the pastor’s salary?” 

“No-o,” was Brother Elting’s breath-taking reply. “No, 
I’m sorry to say it doesn’t. We’ve been behind in all the 
finances, and unfortunately that account will show a deficit 
this year.” 

Two or three of the brethren showed the surprise which all 
felt. Said one, “Deficit? But, Brother El ting, this church is 
not used to deficits in the pastor’s salary. Do you mean that 
there’s a possibility that he won’t be paid in full?” 

And Treasurer Elting patiently presented for their informa¬ 
tion a nice point of Methodist law. “You see,” he explained, 
“no Methodist church guarantees its pastor a fixed and definite 
salary. It pays what it can, and when it has done that, and 
the pastor goes to conference at the end of the year, the slate 
is wiped clean for the new year. That has been the Methodist 
rule from the beginning. But the current bills that I paid— 
why, there’s no wiping the slate of them; naturally they’ve got 
to be paid, in full, some time or other. So I have paid them, as 
far as I could, because it is important that we maintain the 
church’s credit.” 

Whereupon things began to happen; with Peter, nominally 
chairman, too astounded to take a hand in them. 

Superintendent Trotter, whose innocent question had pro¬ 
duced the crisis, had a way of becoming thin-lipped, and white 
about the mouth, when he was struggling to keep from reveal¬ 
ing the temper nature had given him. He rose and spoke with 
an ominous directness, scorning to waste so much as a syllable 
on the treasurer’s fantastic “law.” 

“Since Brother Middleton starts to Conference in the morn¬ 
ing,” said he, “it is too late to remedy, as it should be rem¬ 
edied, this disgraceful and unheard-of situation. However, I 
move that the deficit on our pastor’s salary be carried over to 
the new year, and that this amount, as well as the current 


SHODDY 


177 


salary of next year, be made a first charge on all our receipts 
until the pastor is paid up to date; and also that hereafter 
there shall always be a month’s advance salary in the treasury 
before any bills are paid.” 

The motion was seconded by two or three. Peter, for once 
at a loss, turned helplessly to Dick Davenport. “You put the 
motion, Dick. I can’t.” 

But Dick, usually a trifle deliberate, was angry enough to 
think swiftly. He had something better to offer. 

He said, “I’d gladly put Brother Trotter’s motion, because 
I know what’s in his mind. But isn’t there a better way? I 
mean, I’ll be one of two, three, four, as many as you please, to 
advance the money now, not to the pastor, but to the church, 
giving our personal checks. That way our claims for reim¬ 
bursement will be the sort that our treasurer thinks has to be 
paid. We can instruct the treasurer to pay, from what we put 
in, the balance due on our pastor’s salary.” 

On the instant he had half a dozen offers. Then he put so 
much of Brother Trotter’s motion as was still pertinent, and 
declared it carried; Treasurer Elting and one other not voting. 

It was almost a physical nausea which brought the sweat to 
Peter’s face as he adjourned the meeting. Most of the mem¬ 
bers gathered about him, in the interval of writing checks, to 
assure him that in their opinion Elting was a fool, as well as 
a. scoundrel. One spoke up hotly, “I wish I’d called for his 
resignation on the spot.” 

Elting, busy with the unwelcome checks which were being 
forced upon him, overheard the remark. “You could have 
had it,” he snarled. “I’m through with a board that doesn’t 
appreciate the careful handling of its funds. My resignation 
will be ready at the next meeting. You can find somebody else 
to worry about your bills—and your precious pastor.” 

That was Peter’s unhappiest going to Conference. He had 
done a good year’s work, and the church had never been more 
usefully busy in all its activities. In spite of the industrial 
depression in Iliopolis, the benevolent collections, which he al¬ 
ways personally supervised, were not noticeably short. Really, 
nothing untoward had happened, except that one flare-up in 
the official board. Of course, his talk in the Fleming Circle 
had been variously reported, the versions being variants of 


178 SHODDY 

Jim Weatherley’s report to Dr. Bonafede. But that did not 
touch his own people. 

Still, Peter felt there might be something sinister behind 
even that, and looking forward into the new year was not the 
pleasant imaginative exercise it had been at other Conference 
seasons. 


x 

Treasurer Ebenezer Elting was as good as his word. His 
resignation was in the hands of the pastor at the first official 
meeting after conference, and the meeting promptly accepted 
it. When the unanimous vote was announced, Dick Davenport 
said, with huge relief in his voice, “Well, that’s disposed of.” 

Peter was not so sure. 

Now Elting was a lawyer—there are degrees of decency 
among lawyers—and he had his office in a third-rate building 
on the edge of the law district, a building filled with similarly 
dubious professional men. Here he specialized in the shadier 
mazes of the law. The buying and selling of tax-titles occupied 
him in the season, and he did himself very well in some sorts 
of personal injury cases and the collection of peculiar and 
variously doubtful debts. Any bit of shady practice which 
promised a legitimate return from the time and effort spent 
was acceptable, always provided that it also offered possibilities 
of collateral profit outside the usual scale of fees. 

He had come to Iliopolis from a little town in the South¬ 
west, a place where periodical revivals and protracted meet¬ 
ings, persisting from the days when they had been great social 
as well as religious functions, provided an abundant supply of 
sensuous religiosity, but made very little demand on the com¬ 
monplaces of an everyday citizenship. And not only had he 
brought with him the warped ethical sense of the emotional 
inebriate, but, as the event disclosed, a very pretty hangover 
of original sin. 

He was no fool. He understood that a frontal attack on 
Middleton would be sure to fail; the action of the official board 
assured him of that. He would find other approaches. 

For one thing he knew a woman whose hobbledehoy son had 
been mildly rebuked for creating disturbances at various social 
gatherings in the church, and, for worse offenses, more sternly 


SHODDY 


179 


dealt with. The mother had chosen to become highly indig¬ 
nant over the insult to the competence of her motherhood. 
And there was a brother who had made so utter a failure of a 
Sunday School class that his release had been demanded by the 
parents of almost all his scholars. He, too, was nursing a 
grievance. In a church the size of Columbus Avenue a dili¬ 
gent seeker may easily turn up five or six such malcontents, as 
Elting did. 

This particular trouble could have been kept within bounds, 
even so, but the deposed teacher happened to be an employe 
of the Board of Special Philanthropies. When Elting had 
heard his story, he extended a true brother’s sympathy. He 
gave him the comforting assurance that he was not the only 
one to suffer from the autocracy of an “unspiritual” pastor, 
and rehearsed the lamentable experience of the doting mother, 
not forgetting to describe with spiteful distortion of the facts 
his own virtual expulsion from the treasurership. 

And, he intimated, all the church work was suffering; not 
only from these things but from the pastor’s uneven favor. 
Brother Middleton was too much wrapped up in those young 
men who were forever hanging about him, and in the young 
people’s society. Besides, he was away too much. What 
Columbus Avenue needed was a man who would stay on the 
job, and who knew enough to make more use of people who 
had the interests of the whole church at heart. 

All this found various utterance in the office of the Board, 
as the offended brother talked with his fellow-workers. There 
being no other member from Columbus Avenue on the staff to 
redress the balance of his complaining, it was not long before 
forty or more people, busy every day with Methodist affairs, 
and coming from at least a dozen churches of Iliopolis and its 
suburbs, somehow had the impression that at Columbus Avenue 
things were not going very well, and that the church would 
soon be ripe for a change. 


XI 

It was in this fashion that the affair came to Bartelmy Bona- 
fede’s notice. For several reasons it interested him. He be¬ 
gan by being sorry that even his old friend Peter could not 
escape the common lot of Methodist preachers, and by easy 


180 


SHODDY 


approaches came to wondering how the difficulty, if it really 
existed, might be used to the furthering of the Kingdom. He 
would be the last man to do Peter Middleton an injustice. 
Wasn’t there some way to relieve him from what must have 
already become a difficult situation and might soon become an 
intolerable one, and in the very doing of it contrive to recog¬ 
nize and utilize his undoubted talents and his expressed prefer¬ 
ence? He recalled James Weatherley’s disclosures about the 
Fleming Circle discussion. If, in bringing about some such 
relief to Peter, it could be managed so that Peter’s change of 
appointment might be a relief to other people as well, would 
not the outcome be a happy one for all concerned? He had 
said, so Weatherly reported, that work with students made a 
great appeal to him. 

It is hardly fair to Bartelmy to say that thus early in his 
secretaryship he had begun to aim at a higher place. And yet 
he had been made to think of it more seriously than ever. 
Even when he had been only a little over a year in office, he 
attracted so much attention by his thorough-going and, on the 
whole, competent reorganization of his Board’s activities that 
more than one man said, “Dr. Bonafede, your work in this 
office will make you a bishop.” 

That remark, commonplace as it is, points to one of the 
weaknesses in the Methodist Episcopal system. For “Bishop” 
is a highly glamorous word. And, because in the past the 
office has had in it so much of the power and the glory, am¬ 
bitious men have sought to win it by spectacular zeal in lower 
station. Not only so, but men who, left to themselves, would 
not have sought the episcopacy, have been almost driven by 
the persistent praise of their admirers to become receptive 
candidates for the office. 

In Methodism there is nothing like the episcopacy for re¬ 
warding conspicuous service. It is the church’s supremely dis¬ 
tinctive office. It is the only office with a life-tenure. It is 
the only office which carries an assured and comfortable re¬ 
tiring allowance. And so on. 

Most of all, by universal Methodist consent it is the only 
office in the church’s gift which imputes to its possessor an awe¬ 
some and ineffable importance, wholly apart from his innate 
worth. The “Board of Bishops” (in the South they say “Col¬ 
lege of Bishops”) has many of the characteristics of a small 


SHODDY 181 

and powerful nobility; it is in a real if restricted sense a House 
of Peers. 

Men who have unsuccessfully sought the episcopacy for its 
very tangible rewards are to be found in almost every confer¬ 
ence. On the other hand, it is not difficult to name a few men 
who, with abilities primarily non-episcopal, have had the epis¬ 
copacy thrust upon them. Almost any Methodist can tell 
you of such men; one, a uniquely-gifted soul whom many ad¬ 
mired and few really understood, a Pegasus hitched to the ad¬ 
ministrative plow; another, orator to his finger-tips, going 
from ill health in one great pastorate to recuperation in an¬ 
other, and thence to the episcopacy; glorious in the pulpit, 
eloquent on the platform, and almost utterly helpless in the 
cabinet room; a third, a high-tension wire of enthusiasm in 
public appeal, in administration often a broken reed. 

If you would understand Methodist politics, you must begin 
and end your studies with the episcopacy. The ramifications 
of its influence reach to the remotest circuit of the obscurest 
conference. 

All this Bartelmy knew. He had watched two General Con¬ 
ference cycles of the disappointed and the successful. He had 
seen that most of the unsuccessful failed because they were 
deceived by their vanity or else destroyed by a blundering 
strategy. 

When one indication after another began to point him to the 
delectable heights, he did not need to be told that compliments 
were not equivalent to pledged votes. As the months went by, 
and honeyed words were multiplied in his ear, Bartelmy’s 
pulses quickened. He must be careful. This, after all, was 
his first quadrennium as a General Conference official. On the 
other hand, men had been made bishops after only four years 
in a secretaryship; while others, less resourceful or slower at 
making friends, had toiled quadrennium after quadrennium, to 
be elected at length with all too brief a span between attain¬ 
ment and retirement; or, more often, had ended in shallows 
and in miseries, destroyed by the General Conference’s dead¬ 
liest drug—neglect. 

Might it not be that a quick, bold, aggressive effort, while 
his secretarial projects were still fresh with the dew of their 
first beautiful allurement, would take him to the goal, before 
the dangerous days drew near, days of steady pull, of heart- 


182 SHODDY 

breaking effort to realize his paper plans against the drag of 
ever-increasing costs? 

The chances were doubtful that he could hold at its full 
height through another four years the specious sort of popu¬ 
larity he now had, or, at least, was sure to attain by General 
Conference time. Why not avoid all danger of a diminishing 
prestige by getting out now—and up? There would be no lack 
of men to take his place, and even to help him as he had helped 
Dr. (now Bishop) Dalkeith, men who would not realize, and so 
need not be told, that no successor could repeat his tour de 
force of an expansive reorganization of the Board. Already, 
as he knew better than any one else, the Board’s work was 
uncomfortably extended; the next man would most likely have 
to retrench, and while retrenchment is always popular, it does 
not make the sort of reputation on which an Episcopal candi¬ 
date is carried to the General Conference skies. 

Bartelmy Bonafede did not easily decide on the bold course. 
His instinct was to stay where he was, and let circumstances 
thrust him forward. Never could he get his own consent to 
live dangerously. His preference was to consolidate what he 
had attained; to contrive so that any advancement would ap¬ 
pear as the logical and almost inevitable implication of his 
career to date. 

The consideration which decided him was the conviction, 
steadily growing stronger, that an immediate candidacy after 
all, would be the safe, not the risky, thing. The more he cal¬ 
culated his prospects, the more he realized that four years 
later the chances of failure would be greater, and the favorable 
circumstances fewer. So, really, to defer the quest would be 
to miss the tide now rising to the full. In a word, he per¬ 
suaded himself that it was this time or never. Once convinced, 
all hesitation ceased. He was going to be a bishop if he could; 
he would try for it at the golden moment. 

XII 

By the last year of the quadrennium Bartelmy completed a 
plan to make a long itinerary, official beyond all risk of carping 
criticism, which would touch in its sweep every important 
center of Methodism. At every halting place, Board business 


SHODDY 183 

would claim his attention, and he could reckon on an audience 
wherever public address might seem advisable. 

With sedulous toil he put together the one speech which was 
to be his chief dependence on the tour. For months he had 
been trying out in public at every opportunity a collection of 
carefully constructed passages which seemed to hold possibil¬ 
ities of usefulness. Submitting these to a rigorous selective 
process, he assembled the surviving paragraphs into a sort of 
order, and threaded them on a sturdy cord of Methodist ad¬ 
miration for Methodism. 

One could meet critics of this speech who said, with more 
truth than pertinence, that there was very little in it. After 
all, there was this in it, that it served with more than fair 
effectiveness the purpose of its author. 

He needed to appear orthodox, yet safely progressive; he 
must do homage to evangelism, yet so as to avoid undue praise 
of mass emotion in the name of religion; he could, and did, 
let himself go on Prohibition; he managed to seem on intimate 
terms with the idea of stewardship, without being more than 
just polite to the idea of the tithe. He declared boldly for 
Methodist Unification. On that subject he gathered into one 
the fragments of every likely and unlikely plan proposed dur¬ 
ing the previous twenty years. In its details his scheme was 
vague but generous; as an official of the more numerous branch 
of Methodism he knew that he could afford to be more than 
magnanimous, before the event. 

He understood, of course, that his audiences would be made 
up almost wholly of Methodists, and this knowledge filled his 
speech with the appropriate rhetoric. Methodists can stand 
more of that sort of public utterance than most Protestants. 
It is scarcely possible to overdo it, provided it is not too ob¬ 
viously the same old stuff, and Bartelmy could put just the 
touch of himself into it to escape that snare. 

Long familiarity made him amazingly expert with this speech. 
He could do wonders with it. As occasion required, it became 
a lecture, a sermon, a presentation at the annual conference, a 
devotional meditation, an inspirational address. On two min¬ 
utes’ notice he could pick up the thread of it at any given 
point, and move with equal facility to the end of that para¬ 
graph or to the peroration’s challenging thrill. 

For it was a “challenging” speech. The word itself appeared 


184 


SHODDY 


frequently; all the more, it may be, because no one ever 
thought of picking up any verbal gauntlet thus thrown down. 

His audiences took to this masterpiece from its first words. 
He chose to start far back, at the beginning of Methodism in 
America. 

“Methodism was the first Episcopal church in the United 
States,” he would say; “first to align itself alongside the Con¬ 
stitution, first to greet the first President; and from that time 
until now its story has unfolded side by side with the country’s 
history. Our nation’s burdens have been Methodism’s bur¬ 
dens; what troubled the country has always aroused the so¬ 
licitude of the church. It has never held itself aloof from the 
duties and responsibilities of the typical American church. 

“Where can you go in the record of American achievement 
and not find our church in aggressive, militant action? In the 
dark and trying days of the Civil War, when the very existence 
of the American Union was at stake, it was the immortal 
Lincoln himself who paid us his historic compliment, ‘It may 
fairly be said that the Methodist Episcopal Church, not less 
devoted than the best, is by its greater numbers the most im¬ 
portant of all. It is no fault in others that the Methodist 
Episcopal Church sends more soldiers to the field, more nurses 
to the hospitals, and more prayers to heaven than any.’ 

“In the long warfare against the beverage liquor traffic, a 
trade now forever outlawed, thank God, what church has al¬ 
ways been in the forefront of the fight? We have taught 
other churches the art of soul-winning, and have furnished 
them with thousands of converted recruits. When our General 
Conference spoke, a few years ago, of the then scarce-recog¬ 
nized need for Christianizing the social order, that Methodist 
deliverance was seen to be so adequate that it was taken over, 
almost as it stood, by the Federal Council of Churches.” 

Once into the swing of it, Bonafede would stage a grand re¬ 
view of statistical totals. “It is but a century and a half since 
Old World thinkers foretold the doom of Christianity; it had 
but a few years to live. Their successors are still uttering 
prophecies of gloom. And yet Methodism alone, taken the 
world over, now has thirty or forty million who welcome the 
Gospel message as proclaimed by the followers of Wesley, and 
shape their lives by it. Last of all the great churches to take 
its place on the world’s stage, there is not a free church any- 


SHODDY 185 

where which can present the spectacle of such numbers or such 
strength.” 

Here followed the statistical array, and after it his modest 
tribute to the mighty enginery of Methodism. “Her numer¬ 
ical growth, her going out into all the world, have moved at 
equal pace with her marvelous development of polity and ad¬ 
ministration. In her organization we see strength and flex¬ 
ibility, popular control and centralized authority, thus put¬ 
ting behind the church’s single purpose the potent activities of 
innumerable local yet closely related societies. Here is free¬ 
dom which cannot become confusion; here is effective general¬ 
ship which is never allowed to become a religious autocracy. 

“But what has Methodism done with her organization? She 
has disdained to think of herself as a saints’ rest for the too 
easily tired, or as a mere caravansary for pilgrims en route to 
celestial joys. She makes no offer of cloistered immunity from 
the world’s affairs; nor does she hold her people by the claims 
of a medieval magic or the outworn assertions of an archaic 
theology. 

“This Methodism of ours is rather a place of preparation 
for the tasks of this present life. She seeks to put into the 
hearts of the every-day men and women who make up the 
bulk of her membership the spirit of service, so that these 
humble folk, toiling and burdened, shall be trained and will¬ 
ing to give the hand of helpfulness to those lower down; to be 
revivers of the weak and restorers of the fallen and the lost. 

“But it is not for us to boast. Our preeminent position in 
American Protestantism is less an occasion for pride than it is 
a challenge to all the powers which Providence has given us. 
Challenge? A thousand challenges confront us; providential 
leadings which we cannot ignore and dare not thrust aside! 

“Methodists! Lift up your eyes and see the whitening fields! 
In sheer gratitude for what has been entrusted to us, let us 
not fail in this new and perilous time. 

“When we reflect by what strange ways we have come to our 
place of unrivalled influence, how can we help but see it in all 
the divine girding of our people for yet greater achievements? 

“It was the Methodist circuit rider who went into the West 
with the pioneer, and ahead of him, and claimed it for God. 
Never did the procession of Westward-moving life lack his 
fearless warnings and his moving appeals. He and his succes- 


186 


SHODDY 


sors helped to lay the foundations of future empire, from the 
Eastern mountains to the Western ocean, until, today, Method¬ 
ism is the mightiest spiritual force on the continent. 

“What does that mean? No longer can we be content to 
think of this country alone. When John Wesley said ‘The 
world is my parish’ he dreamed of no such opportunity as we 
have had revealed to us. It is ours to think now, not in terms 
of states or even the continent itself; ours has become a world 
church, with world-wide expectation and responsibility. 

“From this day on, every time we put the church’s resources 
back of the new communities and societies on any American 
frontier, every time we fling out the Methodist banner, start 
meetings, organize a Sunday School, send a preacher and en¬ 
list new soldiers in our (Captain’s army, we must realize that 
we are taking new ground for Methodism and for humanity 
the wide world over. 

“I want you to see how every cross-roads church is part of 
a mighty enterprise of world evangelism and service. America 
must not be content to pour out its material harvests by way of 
the Golden Gate, the Gulf and the Atlantic for the sustenance 
of the world; Methodism must help our country to prepare 
for and meet the spiritual challenge of our strategic place in 
the world’s life. 

“Let us sound the note, from ocean to ocean, that the future 
of religion in the earth is in the hands of that church which is 
willing to make the largest investment and the most daring 
ventures in the prosecution of its varied work, as varied as the 
limitless needs of humanity. 

“Already our connectional form of Christianity carries the 
light of the Gospel to the remotest corners of the world. Not a 
church of our name but has its share in this task; not a com¬ 
mission, not a society, not a board, including that with which 
I have the privilege of serving, has in its truest purpose any 
other task, any other objective; but is part of this high and 
holy purpose. 

“Never were we so near to understanding and applying the 
full program of the gospel. Never was there such evidence of 
our success. Our numbers grow by multiplied thousands; we 
see the youth of the land swarming into our services and our 
schools. Never had we such properties as we have now ac¬ 
cumulated, and never was there such concern among us to 


SHODDY 


187 


make them perfectly adapted to modern needs. The spiritual 
life of our membership comes to new intensity and power. 

“Brethren, Methodism moves out and forward once more. 
We are not ashamed to count ourselves of the church militant. 
As Wesley gathered the first Methodists for an advance that 
transformed England, as Francis Asbury led his ragged preach¬ 
ers across the Alleghanies to the conquest of the West, so we 
in our turn must march in a new campaign, far beyond all our 
former boundaries. 

“Speaking as one entrusted with responsibilities that at times 
seem far beyond my humble powers, I cannot understand how 
any true Methodist may hope to escape the call of this hour. 
In whatever part of the army the leaders think he may best 
serve, there he must be willing to serve; it is for the church 
to command, and for him to obey. All considerations of per¬ 
sonal ease or pleasure should be sternly set aside; in a larger, 
nobler sense than that in which the cry is being used to win 
recruits to hard-pressed England’s armies, every Methodist 
must hear and heed the call, ‘Your King and Country need 
you!’ 

“In closing, let me say that I have but set before you a few 
of the moving facts of the present crisis. These facts are not 
to be denied, or even questioned. I beseech you to draw from 
them the conclusions which I believe they infallibly indicate. 
Get the vision of your church’s newest task, in a world whose 
needs are daily growing more acute. Face like Methodists the 
larger opportunities of such a day as has not been on earth 
until our time. Hear and answer its compelling call!” 

There was much more to it than this. According to the 
character of his audience, he brought in his intimate denom¬ 
inational details. He could select as at a cafeteria, and offer 
to each group of hearers the balanced ration he thought it 
would most warmly receive. 

But always the large view was presented; always the people 
felt that here was a statesman of the faith, dealing in greater 
matters than they could quite envisage; but, with it all, a man 
of humble mind and brotherly heart, a man who could reveal, 
if he had the time and they had the capacity to take it in, 
the whole secret of Methodism’s greatness; and who, as it was, 
made them realize how fortunate was the church in a day like 


188 SHODDY 

this, to have at least a few such men of faith and vision and 
deep devotion. 


XIII 

But before he could set out with a mind completely at rest, 
Bartelmy Bonafede must be able to assure himself that Peter 
Middleton would soon be too busy to set people thinking that 
the church’s great benevolent work could be curtailed. For¬ 
tunately, Bishop Randolph was interested, though not for the 
same reason, in taking care of Peter. 

When Bishop Randolph dropped in at Bartelmy’s office one 
morning, the good man happened to speak of Peter Middleton. 

“You know, Dr. Bonafede, I don’t need to seek opportuni¬ 
ties; but it seems to me a little strange that Brother Middle- 
ton has never asked me to speak at Columbus Avenue.” 

Bartelmy murmured his sympathetic understanding. 

“It isn’t,” the bishop went on, “as if it would cost him or 
his church anything. Of course, most churches for which I 
speak send me a small check—fifty dollars or so, and I have 
plenty of places where I can put the money, after I have al¬ 
lowed for my expenses. But here in my own town there would 
be no traveling expenses; many of his people have cars, and 
would be glad to be useful—and I shouldn’t really expect the 
check. I don’t complain, as I say. Still, don’t you think it 
rather strange?” 

Bartelmy assured the bishop that he did, and that it was 
really too bad. “But,” said he, “Middleton has always been 
pretty independent, you know; he’s done unusually good work 
at Columbus Avenue, too. He’s been there five or six years. 
I do hear of late there is some talk of friction, but it is prob¬ 
ably just irresponsible chatter.” 

“No, it isn’t,” the bishop contradicted, who counted his 
right to know when such talk was going on as an unquestion¬ 
able Episcopal prerogative. “I’ve been hearing things myself, 
from Sister Unwin, and Brother Elting, and some others. What 
have you heard?” 

“Well,” said Bartelmy, “it’s all slight enough; but one or 
two officials seem to have been dropped rather suddenly, and 
I’m told there’s some slight complaint of Peter’s out-of-town 
lecturing.” 


SHODDY 


189 


“Does he lecture for pay?” 

“I can’t say as to that,” Bartelmy replied, “probably he 
gets his expenses and a trifle more. But in fact I know very 
little about the whole business. I should know even less, ex¬ 
cept that in an office like this, with people from so many Ilio- 
polis churches, and with all sorts of comings and goings, things 
do get talked about.” 

“And there’s something in this talk,” the bishop averred; 
“I shouldn’t wonder if sooner or later it meant a change at 
Columbus Avenue.” 

“Surely not. Middleton’s place would be hard to fill, as 
everybody knows; you best of all. However, Bishop, if the 
time does come when a change must be considered, I rather 
think our Board might like to put in a bid for Brother Mid¬ 
dleton.” 

It was quick thinking, for Bartelmy. But the moment 
seemed opportune, and he had been on the lookout for such 
moments. 

“Why, what in the world can you do with him?” 

“Nothing that is definitely formulated; so far as I can see, 
Middleton is good for several years yet at Columbus Avenue.” 

“But if he isn’t?” 

“Well, in that case, though, mind you, I’m not suggesting 
it, I’ve been thinking a little of that Oxford Fellowship project 
at the State College of Technology. This year the report is 
that the college has over nine hundred students of Methodist 
families; certainly it is almost time our church were doing 
something to hold them to the faith of their own homes.” 

“I know, I know; but, Bonafede, your Board has no money 
for new work; however could you take care of a man like 
Middleton in such a venture? He has his serious limitations, 
but he’s an important man. Look at the salary he’s getting. 
He wouldn’t think of it.” 

“Please understand, Bishop, that I’m not recommending any¬ 
thing. But I have often thought that we may have been too 
fearful and prudent about some of these new enterprises. 
Given a man with courage, and real ability, and without many 
home ties, is it not conceivable that he might establish a great 
work by actually going about the doing of it? As the Method¬ 
ist fathers did, you know, ‘with neither script nor purse.’ It 
might appeal to the heroic in Middleton. He’s talked some- 


190 


SHODDY 


what in that strain, as I happen to know. We could put a small 
amount into the venture, and he could get some support on 
the ground.” 

“It would likely be just that,” said the bishop—“on the 
ground; just what he could pick up. A lot of students and a 
few professors would furnish pretty thin pickings. But there’s 
real stuff in what you say. I must have time to consider it.” 

“Is there some possibility, Bishop,” Bonefede asked, struck 
by that word “consider,” “that you would like our Board to 
take action looking to the beginning of work at the college if 
you can see your way to appointing Middleton?” 

Neither the bishop nor Bartelmy had meant nearly so much 
as that; yet when Bonafede put the idea into words, the good 
man felt that it was worth adopting. So he appropriated it, on 
the spot. 

“That’s it, exactly. I’m holding this conference this year, 
you know. When I can see my way a little further, about a 
new man for Columbus Avenue, maybe you and I and Brother 
Middleton can agree that he is the sort of man you want. If 
he is, your Board shall have him.” 

Bartelmy wondered if he had not gone too far. Whatever 
was done with Peter, he preferred that somebody else should be 
responsible for proposing it. So he hastened to enter a dis¬ 
claimer. “Please don’t assume that even with Middleton we 
could make a start altogether on naked faith. Things are not 
done that way in these days; and I have no idea what the 
Board might think if so irregular a proposal were even men¬ 
tioned. Ours is a rather conservative Board, you know. And 
Middleton must have some assurance of support.” 

“Yes, I know,” said the bishop. “And of course I entertain 
no such assumption as you hint at. But I think you would 
be able to manage a small appropriation for such a man as 
Middleton.” 

The more Bartelmy thought of it the more he was willing 
that the bishop should think the idea his own. That way it 
would be much more likely to result in action. 

He had been more shaken than he cared to admit, even to 
himself, by the report which had come to him of the discussion 
which Peter had set going in the Fleming Fellowship. Peter 
Middleton in a strong and independent pulpit was free to 
speak his mind in many places besides Iliopolis, And it was 


SHODDY 


191 


distinctly not to the interest of the Board of Special Philan¬ 
thropies, or that of its secretary, that notions and arguments 
such as Peter had employed before the Fellowship should at¬ 
tain wide acceptance, or even currency. 

Peter had more than once said that such work as this at 
Tech had in it something attractive to him. If he was sent to 
it, he would be so fully occupied for several years that he would 
have no time nor strength for agitation. Besides, he would 
be, in a sense, an appointee of the Board; its servant, in fact; 
and simple loyalty would be yet another check on his ten¬ 
dency to think that much of church benevolence is no more 
than a passing phase of organized religion. 

XIV 

While Bartelmy planned his criss-crossing tour of the coun¬ 
try, Viola considered, as she had so often considered before, the 
fortunes of her husband. He was looking ahead, she knew, to 
the last great move which long ago her father had prophesied. 
She knew that he was making progress; remarkable progress. 
Though she could not have explained why, each interval be¬ 
tween Bartelmy’s several rises to larger importance in the church 
seemed to her long and inexpressibly dreary. Sweet were the 
fresh delights of each new distinction; but after a few months, 
all was as before. 

Viola, for all she discerned, without his telling, the signifi¬ 
cance of this campaign of which Bartelmy’s coming travels were 
to be a part, held aloof from his plans. When the time came 
for her to do her share in the promotion of their joint ambition, 
she would be ready, as she had been before. She would not 
spare herself. And then, if he won through to the great prize, 
his success would be hers, and it would suffice. This time it 
would not be something to enjoy for awhile and then to find 
wearisome. To be a bishop’s wife; envied, talked about, sought 
after—that would last. She had always been keen over his suc¬ 
cesses; what she would do when he had no more worlds to con¬ 
quer was a consideration which did not so much as rise in her 
mind. She could no more foresee satiety on that ultimate pin¬ 
nacle than a king’s son can receive the saying that crowned 
heads are uneasy sleepers. 

To Bartelmy himself she had not changed much through the 


192 


SHODDY 


years, save by becoming more frankly the woman she had 
always been. If his world recognized him, so would she; when 
no new rewards came his way, and he was absorbed in the tasks 
of his office, she was by turns indifferent and exacting. 

He had ceased years ago to puzzle his head over his wife’s 
oscillations between apathy and antipathy, having long since 
concluded that, at bottom, she simply could not forgive him for 
being what he was. From the first she had condescended, and 
he had not resented it. Not only did she count him socially be¬ 
neath her; through the years she had made him feel also that 
she considered him something less than genuine. 

Viola had never seen his people. It was perhaps as well. She 
would not have appreciated Luke Bonafede’s inarticulate sin¬ 
cerity; and Hannah Bonafede, with the not inexact sense of 
values acquired in one of Thornlea’s better families, would have 
seen through her daughter-in-law at their first meeting. 

Old Luke, after achieving neither success or failure in his 
adopted country, died in Nepperhan, and his mother, weary of 
vain longings for an invitation to visit her prospering son and 
her only grandson, had gone forlornly back to Thornlea. The 
younger children were married and away. 

Bartelmy had been up to Nepperhan for his father’s funeral, 
and, thereafter, whenever he was in New York alone. The last 
time was just before his mother went home to England. 

“I know you’re a busy man, Bart, and I don’t complain;” 
she told him, “it’s enough for me that you’re a good man, too, 
and useful in the Lord’s work. I can go back all the more con¬ 
tent for that. I’ve arranged to live with my cousins, the 
Braithwaite sisters, two miles from the place where you were 
born.” 

Bartelmy paid her expenses home, and as long as she lived 
he wrote her four times a year, sending with his letter a check 
large enough so that with what she had from her father’s estate, 
Hannah Bonafede’s last days were circumstanced more com¬ 
fortably than she had ever lived before. But she was a lonely 
woman in her old age. 

Bartelmy more than once had taken Viola with him to New 
York, when official business called him thither. But by excuses 
and contrived engagements she avoided any chance of being 
with him when he went to see his parents. She knew they must 
be utter plebians, who probably spoke execrable English and 


SHODDY 


193 


wore frumpy clothes; and whose son, by good fortune and effort 
—she was fair enough to concede the effort—had risen quite 
above his origins. 

Naturally she could not forget that her father had served one 
term as District Judge, retiring only to take up the much more 
lucrative employment of counsel and general political adjuster 
for the railroad; and her mother was one of the Philadelphia 
Waynes. Anybody could see that Bartelmy Bonafede had been 
extraordinarily fortunate in his marriage. 

xv 

That summer Bartelmy made a series of camp meeting and 
summer-school engagements, not neglecting the profitable con¬ 
tacts which his travels afforded. Viola took advantage of his 
long absence from home to close up the house. Marcus she sent 
off to a boys’ camp in the Adirondacks, while she betook herself 
to Atlantic City. She could live at a good hotel, have a special 
boy for her chair on the Boardwalk, and spend some of the 
time, at least, in thinking about being a bishop’s wife. 

Her capacity for these enjoyments still unsated, she stayed 
on at the seashore late into the w T aning summer. Bartelmy had 
a week in Iliopolis between dates, and Marcus was home from 
the camp. For once the two had a little time alone together, 
and it must be said that they scarcely knew what to do with it. 

They were at dinner one night when Marcus broached the 
subject which had been in the margins of his mind all summer. 

“Father, you said last spring when I finished high school that 
I ought to be thinking right away what college I wanted to 
attend this fall. But you didn’t say what college you would 
advise. It’s getting late in the sumimer, and maybe it’s too late 
for me to get in at some places. What school do you think I’d 
better try for?” 

Bartelmy, sure enough of himself at the office or on the plat¬ 
form, found himself with no answer to his son’s question. His 
work brought him into contact with the heads of many Meth¬ 
odist colleges; perhaps he knew too many to risk the consequen¬ 
ces of choosing for Marcus. 

“Well, son; I can’t say that I really know. There are senti¬ 
mental reasons why I should like you to have a year or two at 


194 


SHODDY 


Calder, my own college, but I suppose you have thought of 
other schools not so far away.” 

“The distance might not be much of a hindrance,” said 
Marcus, “but do you think I should find there what you want 
me to have?” 

Bartelmy though he mightn’t. But, after all, what was it he 
wanted his son to have?' What plans had he for the boy’s fu¬ 
ture? It came as a sort of hurt surprise to him that he hadn’t 
any; and, so far as he knew, Viola had given the subject no 
more attention than himself. What did Marcus think about it? 
He put the question to the boy. 

“Well,” said Marcus, “it’s not easy to say. I’m not cut out 
for a preacher; I like tools, and, apparatus, but my math grades 
are something fierce, so there’s no show for me in the real scien¬ 
tific branches. They’re full of math, you know.” 

“What does interest you, then, so far as you have thought 
about the future?” 

“I haven’t thought much, I’m afraid; at Alexander Moore 
they said I could write. But I think I know what I’d like to 
find out at college.” 

“Yes?” 

“You may laugh, Dad; but I want to take a good look at the 
world. I want to know what it’s all about. Not to get exact 
facts about one part of it, but the whole scheme in general, if 
you get me.” 

“Why, yes; I get you; but where is there a college that has 
that sort of a curriculum? I know of none.” 

“Maybe not a real curriculum, but I’ve been told there’s a 
little bunch of teachers at State Tech who aim at doing some¬ 
thing of the kind. Historians, biologisrts, literature teachers, 
physicists, and such like. They are ready to give all sorts of 
help to a fellow who wants to get where he can sort of take a 
look at the whole show; I mean, the whole range of human 
knowledge. They seem to figure that if he gets it he can do a 
better job at choosing the part he’d like to take up and dig into, 
because he’d sort of feel more at home in the world. That’s no 
way to put it, but maybe you see what I’m trying to say.” 

Marcus had feared that his father would be hard to convince. 
Now his fear seemed justified; Dr. Bonafede gave no sign that 
he was favorable to the idea of Tech. Perhaps some other 
argument was needed, some conclusive proof that it was the 


SHODDY 195 

best of all possible schools. Unhappily he had no idea how to 
prove such a plea. 

His father asked, “You are really sure you want to go to 
Tech?” 

Marcus gave up his fruitless search for additional evidence. 
A direct question he could manage; all it called for was a direct 
answer. 

“Yes, father; I’m sure. There isn’t any other college I care 
about. I want to go to Tech.” 

Bartelmy had listened to his son with a growing uneasiness. 
From the moment when Marcus had first mentioned Tech, he 
knew that he had something larger to deal with than a boy’s 
interest in the attractions of a vaguely-apprehended college 
course. Why had he not seen it before he had gone so far into 
that arrangement about Peter? But, now that he did see it, 
what could be done? What ought he to do? Should he tell 
the boy that most likely Peter Middleton would be his pastor 
if he went to Tech? 

If Marcus entered Tech, inevitably he would come under 
the influence of Peter. And yet, why not? What harm could 
Peter do him? For that matter, what other influence would be 
so good for him? Bartelmy could afford that reflection, in 
private. 

Nevertheless, the thought annoyed him. At the moment when 
he realized that he had let the four high school years go by 
without having made a place for himself in his boy’s life, the 
boy was proposing something which rendered futile any hope of 
making up for lost time; something, besides, which would en¬ 
hance Peter’s influence as it diminished his own. 

A helpless jealousy of Peter Middleton swept over him; a 
wave of illogical resentment. Why were their paths forever 
crossing? And why was it that Peter forever put him at a dis¬ 
advantage? It had always been so. True, most people would 
say that he had usually come out ahead. But how often his 
victory had been mere illusion! He had married more circum¬ 
spectly than Peter; but Peter had married Effie. Effie was dead 
these many years; but Peter had memories he could never know. 
He had been more successful in his career, but Peter seemed 
unimpressed by the successive steps of his progress to official 
importance. He had become one of the church’s acknowledged 
leaders; but, he knew, not to Peter. If only Peter would admit 


196 


SHODDY 


his superiority! It seemed that he cared more for Peter’s opin¬ 
ion than for all the others’. 

Bartelmy made an effort to shake off the black mood which 
had settled on him. He had come to an impasse. He had 
thought at first to discourage Marcus from thinking of Tech; 
but now he saw that he dared not. He knew that Peter’s ap¬ 
pointment to the student work at the college was practically 
settled, though Peter didn’t. And, while Bartelmy might face 
the thought of inflicting on his son a double disappointment, he 
could not endure that his son should one day find out the rea¬ 
son, and turn on his father. 

Marcus had never been so surprised. For at last Bartelmy 
came over and awkwardly put his arm around the lad’s shoulder. 
It was a gesture long disused. 

“My boy”, he said, haltingly, “I think you have hold of an 
idea . . . More and more I am seeing the need for just such a 
change in educational programs as you say these few men at 
Tech are trying to work out. So, then Tech it shall be. Your 
mother may object, at first, but she’ll see the wisdom of it, I 
think. I hope so, because she will be able to do as much for you 
as I can. You know she has her own income and she can do as 
she pleases with it. Of course I’ll do all that’s possible, myself. 
You’ll get along. And it will not be many days before you will 
be twice glad that you are going to Tech.” He could not help 
that last touch, though he knew it for weakness. 

Marcus was incurious. Enough that he might get ready for 
the great adventure. Other delights could come as they would. 

But Bartelmy was not done with ordeals. He must face the 
necessity of explaining things to his wife, who, though she was 
not likely to care what college Marcus might attend, would not 
be easy to manage when she learned that her boy was going 
where he would be under the daily influence of Peter Middleton. 

Viola’s feeling about Peter, as her husband knew, was more 
unreasonable than his own; all the more he could neither tell her 
so nor hope to change it. One thought gave him comfort. Noth¬ 
ing was publicly known, as yet, of Bishop Randolph’s purpose 
to appoint Peter to the Oxford Fellowship at Tech. He would 
merely need to be careful lest he betray to Viola that he had 
any knowledge of the arrangement. Then, when Viola and 
everybody else found out that Peter was to be pastor of the 
Methodist students, including Marcus, though she might make 


SHODDY 197 

trouble, she would not blame him. And it would be too late to 
undo what had been done. 

Bartelmy had rightly forseen the quality of his wife’s recep¬ 
tion of the news that Marcus had chosen Tech, and that his 
father had acquiesced. Within an hour of her return home she 
asked the question which brought out so much of the story as 
he chose to tell. Actually it meant little to her, except as one 
of those opportunities she often seized upon, to detach herself 
from all responsibility. 

“I might have known,” she said, “that neither of you would 
consult me. If you had, I could have told you that the Wayne 
men have always gone to Princeton; but of course Marcus is 
only a grandson of the Waynes, and neither you nor he care 
anything about family traditions. I will say you might have 
done worse, and sent him to that cheap little Calder College of 
yours, out in the sticks. But why in the world does he want to 
go to Tech? Is he expecting to be an engineer or something?” 

Bartelmy tried to explain what Marcus was hoping to get at 
college. He did it badly, because Viola could not easily think 
in the terms he must use; but still he thought he stated the case 
better than Marcus had stated it to him. He undersood it more 
clearly than as yet the boy could do; and he knew that it em¬ 
bodied a coming theory of education. If only the Peter Middle- 
ton complication had not arisen. But of that no hint to Viola. 

After all, it might have been worse, as she had said. Viola 
had spoken her mind, and was not thereafter greatly concerned. 
She knew that Tech had a great name in the state, and its foot¬ 
ball team stood high in the Big Nine. Her mention of Princeton 
had been almost wholly extemporaneous; she had vaguely re¬ 
membered her mother’s speaking of uncles who had enlisted in 
the Union army when they were undergraduates at Princeton. 
That was all. 


XVI 

Peter Middleton had not forgotten how his last year’s salary 
deficiency had been made up, on the very eve of Conference, 
under circumstances that shamed him; but he had put the in¬ 
cident away, with other unpleasant memories. In this he was 
not worldly wise; the Ebenezer El tings of Methodist official 


198 


SHODDY 


boards are not to be lightly dismissed, either from the mind or 
from their place in the machine. 

Elting, now ex-treasurer, had told his story industriously, 
with none to contradict; and it had travelled. In its wanderings 
it reached a few people outside Peter’s church who found it 
displeasing; but to two persons it was something which they 
could use. 

To Bishop Randolph, from his first hearing of it, the gossip 
had been confirmation of his opinion that a change of pastors 
was due at Columbus Avenue. After the Bishop’s opening of 
the subject to him, Bartelmy Bonafede looked upon it, when 
considered in the light of Peter’s astonishing talk before the 
Fleming Circle, as an opportunity doubly to serve his Board. 
Peter, he was sure, had just the qualities needed for beginning 
the new work at Tech, which fact would be abundant justifica¬ 
tion for his appointment, no matter how little the work might 
prosper. And, once there, he would have small chance for a 
time at least to air his views about decentralizing the church. 
So by his performance and by non-performance alike the Board 
of Special Philanthropies would be the gainer. 

Since Peter had been at Columbus Avenue, the Committee on 
pulpit supply appointed by the Quarterly Conference had done 
its work each year in the most perfunctory way. Its method, 
or lack of it, was to see the District Superintendent, when he 
came to hold the Fourth Quarterly Conference; and to say, 
“Of course Brother Middleton comes back?” To which the 
District Superintendent would say, “Of course.” And that 
ended the negotiations. 

This year the committee got a jolt. For an episcopal hint to 
the Superintendent had let that good man understand what he 
was to do. There is a sort of code for such instructions, not 
needing to be openly discussed, even among the initiate. 

So he said to the committee, in answer to its usual inquiry, 
“I’mi not quite sure, brethren, what is likely to happen. I un¬ 
derstand that an emergency may arise; I can’t tell you what it 
it, just now,”—the fact being that he didn’t know himself— 
“but it may mean that Brother Middleton will be in line for 
something of large importance.” 

“How about Columbus Avenue being important?” said one 
of the committee. 

“It is,” the Superintendent admitted; “decidedly so. But 


SHODDY 


199 


Brother Middleton is a good Methodist, and therefore he recog¬ 
nizes authority, as we all do. That’s why the church has kept 
itself going so successfully all these years. After all, there may 
be nothing done in the way of change here. Anyhow, there’s 
little to be done now. I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, 
I think maybe it would be as well if nothing were said to Broth¬ 
er Middleton.” 

“Is that so?” the truculent one of the committee asked. 
“‘Well, Mr. Superintendent, let me assure you that something 
will be said to Brother Middleton, and it will be said tonight. 
You may do business the other way, but we don’t.” 

And in the quarterly conference as soon as opportunity 
served, the brother spoke. 

“From a remark three of us heard before this meeting began,” 
he said, “it seems there is some slight possibility that Brother 
Middleton may be moved, unless we do something to head off 
the change. I move, therefore, that, if necessary, the pulpit 
supply committee be instructed to go to Conference and tell the 
Bishop we want our pastor continued.” 

Columbus Avenue did less talking than most Quarterly Con¬ 
ferences, partly because it trusted its pastor and its committees. 
But this was an unusual occasion. Sister Unwin, whose son’s 
disciplining had so rankled in her breast, would have liked to 
say more, being a steward. She knew her rights, but she dis¬ 
cerned that she would be outvoted. She did manage to say, 
“In view of the fact that our church has always been loyal to 
the constituted authorities, I suggest that we leave everything 
in the hands of the Bishop and District Superintendent. If 
we cannot give them our confidence, what is Methodism com¬ 
ing to?” 

Somebody unidentified said, “Second the suggestion,” but 
when the original motion was put, the vote stood sixteen to five 
in favor of sending the committee to Conference. 

At Conference the committee soon discovered that affairs 
were stirring. When at last it gained an audience with the 
Bishop, it found him courteous, but not reassuring. 

“I am not ready as yet to reach any conclusion about your 
pastor,” said he; “but I may tell you that I have an important 
new appointment to make, and so far he seems the best man 
available. If he should be, I trust you and he will see the matter 


200 


SHODDY 


as I do. And you need not fear; I will take good care of 
Columbus Avenue.” 

“But, Bishop*” objected the spokesman, “we don’t want 
Columbus Avenue taken care of. It’s all right as it is. Just 
let us alone; that’s all we ask. And that’s all Middleton asks.” 

“Well, of course that is to be considered, though I have 
heard that your church is not entirely of one mind in the mat¬ 
ter,” said the Bishop. “Suppose you see Brother Middleton this 
evening, and put the question to him, whether, if you released 
him, he would accept another appointment.” 

Whereupon the committee, much disturbed, sought out Peter 
and asked him what it all meant. They found him talking with 
the District Superintendent, who would have excused himself. 
“Don’t go,” said Peter; “this may concern you, as well.” Then 
he told his men, “I’ve heard what the Bishop is thinking of; 
and of course you know that whenever you don’t want me at 
Columbus Avenue, you need only to say so.” 

“We understand all that. If we didn’t want to keep you at 
Columbus Avenue, we would probably be glad to let you take 
this other place,” said the belligerent one. 

A colleague said, “Let’s go tell the Bishop that. He said we 
should report back to him. Our pastor and we understand one 
another perfectly.” 

“It won’t be necessary,” said the Superintendent. “I shall 
see him before bedtime, and I will tell him what you say.” 

To which all hands agreed, and the committee, not unwilling 
to get home to their own beds, took the last interurban for 
Iliopolis. When the District Superintendent reported the con¬ 
versation to Bishop Randolph, it was with a slight but signifi¬ 
cant shifting of its emphasis. 

On Saturday afternoon a disturbing rumor reached Peter. 
Something was in the air, it was said, about his being sent to 
a new place. The appointments would be read on Sunday 
night, for this bishop had put the conference business through 
with unusual dispatch. 

He tried to see the Bishop, but found he was dining with 
people on the other side of town. To Peter the business seemed 
urgent, and he ventured to call the Bishop’s host on the tele¬ 
phone, saying that he must have a word with Bishop Randolph 
on a matter of importance. 


SHODDY 


201 


The Bishop came to the telephone. “Yes, this is Bishop 
Randolph; who is calling?” 

“This is Peter Middleton, Bishop. I’ve just heard that there 
is some danger of my being moved from Columbus Avenue, 
after all. And I felt sure you could not have quite understood 
what my committee and I had said.” 

“Oh, yes, I did, Brother Middleton. They said if you were 
willing to go they would release you, and you said that if they 
should release you, you would move. So I am sending you to 
open that new work at Tech for which there is such a great 
need. You are the one man we can trust with so important 
an enterprise as this Oxford Fellowship.” 

“Well, Bishop, I appreciate your thinking of me for that 
place, but I assure you that’s all wrong about the committee 
and myself. We never said what you have just reported. 
You must have been badly misinformed.” 

• “Not at all; I have the best of authority for what took 
place. And, in any case, it is too late to go into that now. 
The appointments are all fixed, and any change at this late 
moment would dislocate some of the most difficult adjustments 
the cabinet and I have had to make, and compel us to dis¬ 
appoint a number of the brethren whose assignments depend 
on it.” 

“But, Bishop, I can’t go to Tech like this. What can I 
say to my committee? They will believe I have betrayed 
them. They went back home with the understanding that 
everything was all right. What can I tell them?” 

“Why, just tell them that you love them, but that you are 
going to move.” 

“But they understood that you had put it up to them and 
to me, to say what we wished. We did say. I want to go 
back, and they want me back.” 

“I understand. Quite natural, too. All the same, you tell 
them what I said.” 

“But why, Bishop? Are they being disciplined for some¬ 
thing, or am I?” 

“No, no; not in the least. Of course you did get into an 
unfortunate mix-up over Brother Elting, and that Unwin boy, 
and those things are always to be regretted. That’s all. And 
now I am offering you a great chance; such a place as I am 
told you have said you could covet. I hope I shall not have to 


202 SHODDY 

think you capable of standing out against the judgment of the 
Bishop and cabinet.” 

The instinct of discipline is strong in most Methodist preach¬ 
ers; they make almost automatic response when that chord is 
touched. 

Said Peter, obedient yet uncowed, “Bishop, the authority is 
in your hands. But I must say that I do not think you are 
using it fairly. If the appointment stands, you will know, 
with due respect, that I go under protest. And I shall put 
the facts just as they are before my official board at Columbus 
Avenue as soon as I reach home.” 

“Now, now, Brother Middleton, do not speak rashly. You 
will feel much better about the whole affair when you have 
time to think it over. So tell your people that you love them, 
and that you are going to Tech. They will find that I have 
taken good care of Columbus Avenue,” and the Bishop went 
back to his half-eaten dinner. He would not be holding this 
conference next year, and the Columbus Avenue brethren would 
have time to cool off. 

Peter had a most unhappy time of it between the end of 
conference and his actual moving to Great Meadows, the seat 
of Tech. To this day he dislikes to speak of it. His officials 
believed his version of the incident, of course. They knew 
him well enough for that. One of them, indeed, his staunch 
supporter and admirer, Dick Davenport, relieved his mind to 
Peter, and for his pains was gently but firmly told that the in¬ 
cident was closed. 

“You may think it is, Brother Middleton,” said Dick, with 
no little warmth, “and so far as you are concerned, it prob¬ 
ably is. You’ll take your medicine and say nothing. But you 
know as well as I do that it is a rotten piece of business; 
Bishop Randolph didn’t do it all by himself. I’ve been watch¬ 
ing a little on my own account, ever since that time Elting 
tried to bilk you out of part of your salary. He tied up with 
Gladwin, who had to be put out of Sunday School, you re¬ 
member. And Gladwin worked in Dr. Bonafede’s office. No, 
you needn’t try to stop me,” as Peter raised a protesting hand, 
“I know what some of the preachers have said about Dr. 
Bonafede’s being afraid of you, because of that talk you made 
at the Fleming Circle meeting. They said he wanted to get 


SHODDY 


203 


you where you couldn’t interfere with his ambitions, and it 
seems like he’s doing it.” 

“You are greatly mistaken, Dick, my boy,” Peter told him. 
“Dr. Bonafede has no need to fear that I’ll interfere with any 
ambition of his. He knows that; has known it for many 
years.” 

“All right, Brother Peter, have it as you like. But I know 
what I know, not that I love you any less because of it either. 
I just don’t like the system that makes it possible; that’s all.” 


CHAPTER VII 


I 

If Peter had followed his first impulse, he would have de¬ 
clined his new appointment and taken the consequences. Two 
considerations prevented him from doing so rash a thing. For 
it is a rash thing, in Methodism. There are many ways of 
avoiding the final clash of wills, but, if these fail, the man 
who refuses to go to work assigned him is, officially, a rebel. 
No matter how many friends he has, their hands are tied. No 
other bishop can give him an appointment; no other church 
can offer him its pulpit. It is a necessary consequence of the 
Methodist system’s effectiveness; and, short of actually leaving 
the church, there is no escaping it. 

Peter had no desire to leave the church, for he loved it, and 
all his religious life had been found within its fold. More, as 
a student of ecclesiasticism, he thought it the most interest¬ 
ing and in many ways the most competent of all the denomi¬ 
nations. It had larger potentialities of good, and therefore of 
evil, than any other, and the sheer drama of it fascinated him. 

Another reason which deterred him he found in the nature 
of the work to which, by Bishop Randolph’s appointment, he 
must go. The bishop may have had his private reasons for 
getting Peter away from Columbus Avenue, but that did not 
prevent him from a shrewd estimate of his man. He saw that 
a new day was coming in education; a day when as many 
Methodist students would gather in the state schools as in 
those of the denomination. The State College of Technology 
was strategic; it had everything to attract students, and every 
year would have these attractions in increasing measure. He 
felt that Peter was strategic, too; a man who, once he grasped 
the significance of the thing, would throw himself into it with 
joyful disregard of the cost. 

And it was so. Peter Middleton began at Tech with little 
money and less equipment. On the edge of the campus was 
a church building; old, cheaply built, in poor repair. The 


204 


SHODDY 


205 


principal Methodist church of the town, St. John’s, was nom¬ 
inal owner of the place, but services had long since been dis¬ 
continued. For years such Methodist students as wished to 
attend their own church must needs go a mile and a half to 
St. John’s, which made occasional slight pretense of being 
sentimentally interested in them. 

The old church was put at Peter’s disposal, and he spent 
a hundred dollars out of his own pocket on the more obvious¬ 
ly necessary repairs and cleaning. With the help of the two 
college “Y’s” and the registrar’s office, he began to find out 
what students had Methodist affiliations. His experience with 
young people, from the Parkerville days on, was an asset, and 
as always, the group he first rounded up became an eager re¬ 
cruiting agency. Soon the news spread, as news does spread 
among students, that the old church on the edge of the east 
campus had ceased to be a church. It was now the home of 
the Oxford Fellowship and the headquarters of Peter Middle- 
ton,—a Methodist preacher who was more man than preacher. 

Marcus, in his pristine glory as an enthusiastic freshman, 
and not yet able to guess how it had all happened, was content 
to know it for the truth. He took Peter’s advertising in hand, 
and made himself volunteer publicity agent for the Fellowship. 
Every moment he could spare from his studies he gave to card 
indexes and form letters and press notices and posters for the 
various bulletin boards. Rhoda, happy to work with her old 
chum, made the most capable of helpers. The two were more 
often together than ever, with no thought of any other rela¬ 
tionship than their frank comradeship afforded. 

The finances of the Oxford Fellowship would have offered 
no complications to an auditor, though to Peter they were 
endlessly exacting. From the Board of Special Philanthropies 
he had an appropriation of two thousand dollars. Officially, 
this was his salary; there was a maintenance grant of two 
hundred and forty dollars from some obscure Conference fund 
or other; and that was all. 

The old church began to fill up on Sunday mornings. Peter’s 
preaching suited the hard-headed young idealists who heard 
him, and shortly he had a discussion club going on Sunday 
afternoon. A sketchy sort of tea-room made a name for itself 
the first Sunday it was in operation. The new minister’s week¬ 
days were filled with study, visiting, talks with professors, and 


206 


SHODDY 


an unreckoned number of interviews with individual students. 

He and Rhoda lived on the second floor of a house recently 
made over to shelter two families. It was not at all like Co¬ 
lumbus Avenue, spacious and comfortable, but neither the 
Middletons nor Marcus, who promptly made himself an al¬ 
most daily visitor, found any fault with it. Rhoda and he were 
classmates, though “classmate” here, among the hundreds of 
freshmen, stood for something wholly unlike the life at Alex¬ 
ander Moore High, back in Iliopolis. 

One evening Marcus was working on some records he had 
brought from the college office. 

“Say, Pastor Peter,” he spoke, “we’re going strong, don’t 
you think?” Without waiting for an answer he went on, “But, 
we’re headed for trouble. Winter’s on the way; there’s coal 
to get, and the light bill will be bigger. Where’s the money 
coming from for such things?” 

“Well,” said Peter, “why worry? I’ve got a little money to 
spend, and the coal’s already ordered and paid for. It will be 
put in this week. The furnace man says that when he’s re¬ 
placed a little of the old pipe we can be sure of hot air all 
winter. He seems to be something of a joker.” 

“The joker is in what you said about the coal, seems to me,” 
Marcus corrected. “Why should you have anything to do with 
the coal bill? That’s the church’s business.” 

“Sure, my boy; but I’m sent here to get through on exactly 
two thousand two hundred and forty dollars, plus, of course, 
what the students care to pay. The total doesn’t make much 
allowance for coal bills, and we haven’t any plutocrats in our 
membership. That’s why the bill is paid.” 

Rhoda caught at a word. “We do have a membership, 
though, don’t we?” she asked. “We’re a church. Well, why 
shouldn’t the members help to pay the bills? I want to put 
my envelope into the plate, just as I’ve always done. Lots 
more would do it, if we asked them. Let’s have an every- 
member canvass, Daddy.” 

In the end, they had just that. But it was not carried 
on in quite the usual way. Peter saw that he had just two 
groups of people who could be asked to share the expense,— 
the self-supporting Methodist students who had joined or 
might join the Fellowship, and the home people of those other 
students who were mainly dependent on their parents. 


SHODDY 


207 


After much putting of three heads together, supplemented 
by the advice of the Fellowship Council, (Peter thought that 
name suited students better than “Official Board”), the main 
appeal of the every-member canvass was agreed on. To the 
students it was made in person by their fellows and each 
student canvasser put it something like this: “If you went to 
a Methodist college, you’d pay tuition, and you’d get its re¬ 
ligious values free. Here you pay much less for tuition, but 
what religious values you get will have to be paid for by 
somebody, or they can’t be had. Will you chip in a sort of 
voluntary fee for your college religion—say fifty cents or a 
dollar a week for the school year?” 

To the home folks Peter wrote a series of letters. He told 
what the Fellowship was trying to do; showed that the state 
could not do it, nor could the local church at Tech. “We’re 
starting a university church,” he said, “though so far, for 
reasons, we call it a Fellowship, instead. But it is Christian 
to the core, under Methodist auspices, and it is meant for your 
boy and girl. They’ll get all we can give them, money or no 
money, but I put this question to you: Is it worth twenty-five 
or fifty dollars a year to you to know that somebody is caring 
for their realest needs?” 

Many of the students wrote home in similar vein, and money 
began to come in. It was not enough, and never has been, 
in the dozen years since then; but the work has never stopped 
growing. Every year it wins more friends, and by now its 
income is not much more than three years behind its real 
necessities. 

ii 

Marcus wrote home every week, as in duty bound. By in¬ 
clination, he said little about himself, much about the Oxford 
Fellowship and Peter. In late November he wrote, “We’re 
becoming famous at the Fellowship. Last Sunday morning the 
President of Tech himself came to the service. At the close 
Mr. Middleton asked him if he’d like to say a few words, and 
he said he would. He wanted to express his gratitude, and that 
of the whole faculty, to the Methodist church for having the 
courage, as it so often had, to pioneer in a new field, and for 
doing it so splendidly. That’s a feather in your cap, Dad. I 
know Bishop Randolph was the man who sent Uncle Peter 


208 


SHODDY 


here, but I’ve found out that your Board made it possible for 
him to start this thing. Lots of times I’ve wondered about 
your work, and I hope you’ll forgive me for sometimes doubt¬ 
ing it; but if the rest of it does one-tenth as much good as 
this at Tech, you must be doing the biggest job in Methodism. 
So I was a bit ashamed for myself, but proud for you as well 
as for the Fellowship, when Prexy spoke as he did. Maybe you 
ought to get him to write it out, so you can put it into your 
annual report.” 

As Bartelmy read the letter, he meditated on what use he 
might make of Marcus’s suggestion; the time was evidently 
ripe for the invention of a distinctive Board policy as to the 
Oxford Fellowship. Why should not the Tech president’s sur¬ 
mise become an actuality? Already he could see that Peter 
might make history. Why not capitalize the Tech example; 
create a new department in the Board of Special Philanthro¬ 
pies to deal with the whole field? 

Already he was prepared to forget the circumstances of 
Peter’s appointment. Really, it had been more than a credit¬ 
able thing to do; it had been statesmanlike, even beyond his 
own vision of the moment. Bishop Randolph’s part was neg¬ 
ligible. Brother Elting faded into the horizon. And as he 
rationalized the circumstances, Bartelmy began to see how he 
might add a useful section to his great speech, dealing with 
this idea, naturally being careful to couch it in such language 
as would not alarm those Methodists more directly interested 
in the colleges of the church. 

Marcus, home for Christmas, made himself something of a 
nuisance by his enthusiasm for the Oxford Fellowship. Viola 
frankly told him that she wasn’t interested. Bartelmy did get 
some crumbs of information about the boy’s studies. 

“I’m not far enough along yet to know what it may mean,” 
said Marcus, “but even now I begin to see what those profs 
are driving at. They would rather have us interested in what 
we’re doing than cram for grades in the tests. And, believe 
me, that’s what I like. I’m no good in examinations, but I’ve 
got a whale of a lot of reading done. Yes, even in the football 
season.” 

On the Fellowship he let himself go. “Why, Dad,” said 
he, “the students are already talking about a new building,—a 
sort of clubhouse and commons. The church is too small, and, 


SHODDY 


209 


anyhow, it wasn’t built for this sort of work. But we’re using 
it, just the same. I guess it’s the most used church in these 
parts. When I read in the Advocate today about a seven-day- 
a-week church, I had to laugh. Ours has the eight-hour day, 
all week long, and twelve on Sundays. The janitor hardly 
finds time to do his stuff. I tell you, that was a great piece 
of work you did when you got Uncle Peter to start the thing. 
I’ve told him so, more than once.” 

“Have you?” asked Bartelmy, outwardly calm. “And what 
does he say?” 

“Oh, he agrees with me. Says he misses Columbus Avenue, 
and some of the advantages of a big city, but I can see he’s 
crazy about the work at Tech, and what he calls its possi¬ 
bilities for expansion. One day when I was telling him how 
glad I was that your Board had a hand in supporting the 
Fellowship, and that I hadn’t always realized how big your 
job was he said, ‘Marcus, son, your father has often done big¬ 
ger things than anybody thought he intended to do, and this 
is one of them.’ And when I asked him if Bishop Randolph 
didn’t deserve some of the credit, for appointing him, he said 
Bishop Randolph hadn’t nearly so much to do with it as you 
did, and you had done him a great service. Of course I didn’t 
ask for the particulars—maybe you’ll tell me the story if there 
is one—but it was good to have Uncle Peter talk of you like 
that.” 

“It was,” said Bart. “Still, there’s no need to go into details. 
I had something to do with making his appointment possible, 
I will admit. But I doubt if he knows the whole story, and, 
as for my telling it, I’m not quite at liberty to do that. Other 
people are concerned, you know, and I must consider them.” 

“Oh, sure,” agreed Marcus. “It’s all right; I’m not inter¬ 
ested in that part of it, anyway. The main thing is he’s there, 
and Rhoda, and a whole lot of good fellows—girls and boys. 
Only, if you could get your Board to squeeze a little more 
money for the work, I know, speaking as a member of the 
Fellowship finance committee, that it would be most gratefully 
received.” 

Bartelmy hastened to assure Marcus that it was impossible, 
at least for the present. He wished he dared to recommend a 
decent appropriation for Peter’s work, but his boy’s report 
convinced him that the time was ripe for a developing of the 


210 


SHODDY 


Oxford Fellowship idea, and even when money became avail¬ 
able it must not all be given to one piece of work. Blinking 
the uncomfortable implications of Peter’s reported comment, he 
saw that here was something to be considered with the utmost 
circumspection. The moment the general idea was broached 
in official circles, there would be two sets of people to deal 
with,—the claimants for a share of the funds, and the parti¬ 
sans of the church colleges, who might be expected to counsel 
patience and a careful study of the whole subject. 

By this time Bartelmy was beginning to be confident that 
his guess was correct. He was going to be made bishop at the 
General Conference, now only three months away. His can¬ 
didacy was generally recognized. In every knot of gossipers 
at preachers’ meetings, district conferences, and other gather¬ 
ings, the inevitable question, “Who are going to be elected 
bishops?” though it called out a varying list of names, had 
Bonafede’s more often than any other. 

hi 

To most American students, in those first years of the war, 
Flanders and Picardy were names of scarcely more significance 
than Tipperary. They were of the current speech, and one 
saw pictures in the Sunday papers, but that was all. By one 
of those odd chances which now and then indifferently decide 
the fate of empires or the flight of a golf ball, Marcus found 
himself, at the turn of the year, living in the immediate pres¬ 
ence of the war. Some of his work threw him into daily asso¬ 
ciation with a student from Canada, Donald Dugdale, whose 
scholastic interests, never very keen, had scant consideration 
while there was a map of the Western front to pore over, or 
a bulletin about the Princess Pats to set his heart jumping. 

For Donald’s elder brother had gone over with the Canadian 
Scottish, and the boy was hot with a wrathful patriotism, its 
fires fed on the stories from Flanders which in that year were 
taken as Gospel truth. 

However little truth they contained, there was enough in 
them to rouse all Canada. The Canadian Division had been 
out beyond Ypres in the April of T5, when the Germans sent 
the first devilry of the gas in yellow clouds across the trenches, 
and opened a four-mile break in the Allied line. 


SHODDY 


211 


The gas attacks, unexpected and terror-laden, made all the 
other stories of atrocity seem consistent; no Canadian and few 
Americans thought in those days of questioning any tale of 
German malignity. 

Dugdale certainly believed them all; and, though he was not 
yet eighteen, he grew daily more restless and unhappy. 

“I ought to be over there with David right now,” he would 
say; “and I will be, before long. You watch.” 

Marcus sympathized with his eager patriotism. The war 
was beginning to seem more real, and he could almost under¬ 
stand that every loyal Canadian felt the urge to be “over 
there.” He told himself he, too, was a Britisher's son, and, 
anyway, America would have to get into the thing before it 
could end. Day by day the two boys fed each other’s zest for 
battle. It needed only a touch to slip Donald’s leash; and 
when Donald went, Marcus knew he would find holding back 
the most difficult of disciplines. 

The touch came in March with news of David Dugdale; 
he had been taken prisoner. The fragmentary story which 
first came to Donald in a Toronto paper said that he had been 
captured when the Germans counter-attacked after a British 
advance at St. Eloi, just below Ypres. Little knots of Cana¬ 
dians were holding isolated shell craters, under direct observa¬ 
tion of the enemy. Communication was cut off; the wounded 
could not be evacuated, and David, with a shattered foot, had 
been pulled out of the mud and carried back to the German 
second line. 

“That settles it,” said Donald; “David is out of the fight, 
and I’m off to take his place. There’s a forwarding office in 
Iliopolis, and tomorrow they’ll have a chance to tell me whether 
I’m good enough for the kilts.” 

He went, and they were not long in telling him he was good 
enough. The next night he burst into Marcus’s room, aflame 
with war. “I’m enlisting, Marcus, man; I’m enlisting! What’s 
college along o’ this? My dad’s consented; I wired him last 
night from town, an’ I’m off tomorrow. I’ll tell you what; you 
come with me, Marcus!” 

“My father wouldn’t consent,” said Marcus. He was not 
so unmoved as his voice sounded; the staid, phlegmatic Marcus 
he had always been would never have recognized this new self. 

“You don’t need his consent,” said the day-old warrior; 


212 


SHODDY 


“you’re turned eighteen, and the Canadians will take you as 
you stand. I asked particular about fellows like you. Nat¬ 
urally, they won’t enlist you in Iliopolis, but they’ll direct you 
to Canada, and you can join up as soon as you are across the 
border.” 

War-eager Marcus had no defence against anything so ob¬ 
vious, and the two of them were out of Great Meadows by the 
early morning train. Marcus had enough sanity left so that, 
though he ached for a last word with Peter and Rhoda, he 
understood well enough that his only chance of getting away 
on so demented an adventure was by taking French leave. 

Once in and out of Iliopolis without being seen by anyone 
he knew, he sent back from Detroit two night letters, one to 
Bartelmy and one to Peter. They differed little in their word¬ 
ing; he was too excited for careful composition. “Am off to 
the war,” he wired; “after thinking about it a lot. Please don’t 
try stopping me, even though you may have the right. Will 
be in the British Army, ready to welcome first Americans Uncle 
Sam sends. Would have told you direct but feared objections. 
Do your best to bring America into this war to end war. Love.” 

Viola took it hardest, at the first. She shut herself in her 
room, and for two days would see no one. Bartelmy could not 
analyze his feelings; his son’s recent visit had fed his fatherly 
pride, though it had also driven him on himself, and for the 
first time in years he had looked squarely at the purposes to 
which he had yielded his life. The boy was playing the war- 
fevered fool, of course, but at least his folly was generous and 
uncalculating. 

When Viola came out of her seclusion, whatever marks the 
shock had made upon her had been effectually hidden. Bar¬ 
telmy essayed to comfort her, and she did not repel him, but 
he saw that she needed little that he could give. 

“I’ve been thinking of what he wired, about our stopping 
him,” she said. “Do you think we can?” 

Bartelmy had made guarded inquiries, but found little en¬ 
couragement. The boy was of military age, and any attempt 
to get him out of the Canadian army, in these early months of 
’16, would be misunderstood in the Dominion, especially since 
his father was British-born. Canada’s private advices from the 
Western front did not justify slack recruiting methods. “Your 
King and Country Need You” brought men to the colors, but 


SHODDY 


213 


never as many as the replacement staffs in London could use. 

Bartelmy, as usual sparing of unpleasant facts, merely told 
his wife that there was little or no chance of preventing Marcus 
from enlisting. She said, “I didn’t suppose there would be. 
Since father died there’s nobody to give us any advice about 
using influence. Besides, he’s in Canada, and even father would 
not know much about politics over there. Anyway, I’m not as 
scared as I was. Marcus is big for his age. And he doesn’t 
lack brains. If they know what they’re doing they’ll make an 
officer of him, and he’s sure to get leave to come home for a 
few days when his training is ended. He’s not in France yet.” 

Her words were sturdier than her heart’s assurance, but her 
frankest critics never thought of Viola Dimont Bonafede as a 
coward. Unfortunately, the event proved her wrong in one im¬ 
portant respect. Marcus was still in the ranks when embarka¬ 
tion orders came, and there was no such thing as leave. Haig’s 
preparations for the Battle of the Somme called for as many 
men as the Empire could give, and time was the one thing 
which could not be spared. 

Bartelmy remembered another part of his son’s telegram; 
“will be in British army.” Something more than memory 
stirred within him; something deeper and stronger than his 
memories of Thornlea and its poverty; a thousand years of 
English men back of Marcus and himself quite overslaughed 
his less than forty years of the American scene. His eyes filled 
with sudden tears as he thought of his son serving under the 
Union Jack. 

Peter Middleton and Rhoda received the news about Mar¬ 
cus with unmixed and unashamed grief. The war was not yet 
America’s concern, and Peter’s German blood could not quicken 
its pace at the news that Marcus would soon be confronting 
German boys as fine as himself, and no less ignorant about the 
war and its causes. 

By the time Marcus got to the Canadian camp above Mon¬ 
treal, he had been forgiven in writing, though mildly scolded 
as well, and a steady though lopsided correspondence began. 
Everybody wanted to write to the first Allied soldier of those 
Iliopolis and Tech circles in which he had moved. Rhoda ap¬ 
pointed herself correspondent extraordinary. At the Easter 
vacation she went to see Mrs. Bonafede, and told her a group 
of the girls in the Oxford Fellowship would see that Marcus 


214 


SHODDY 


had everything a soldier could need for his comfort; that they 
did not know this soldier’s preferences was Rhoda’s explana¬ 
tion of her call. 

She said, “Mrs. Bonafede, I know we Americans ought to 
be neutral, and Daddy thinks there may be as much to be 
said for Germany as for the Allies. But Marcus and Donald 
are our Fellowship boys, so we’re for them, whoever is to 
blame about the war. Won’t you tell us what we need to know 
about Marcus, so when we send him things we shan’t send the 
wrong sizes, or stuff he specially dislikes?” 

Viola rather welcomed the request. She was discovering that 
having a son at the front brought its own distinctions. Most 
of her club-women friends in Iliopolis were pro-Ally, but she 
was the only mother of a soldier actually with the colors. He 
wouldn’t be at the front for some time, so there was no use to 
worry yet about his safety, and she could get a measure of 
comfort from her distinction. 


rv 

Bartelmy, after a few unpleasant hours in his study, found 
surcease from unpleasant thoughts by throwing himself with 
renewed energy into his campaign. 

For General Conference would open on May 1. The Spring 
Conferences were on, and every day new lists of delegates 
came in. These must be studied, analyzed, classified, and each 
one dealt with according to its estimated value. So there was 
much to be done, although Bartelmy had been able to an¬ 
ticipate many of the election results. 

Almost daily there were important men to be seen and talked 
with. They came to him; the man whose General Conference 
star is ascending receives calls rather than makes them. That 
he can help other men’s projects, if he will, is reason enough. 

In the last week of April it seemed almost as if the whole 
Board of Special Philanthropies had been transferred to New 
Salem, the seat of the General Conference. Secretary Bona¬ 
fede had requisitioned more exhibit space than the committee 
of arrangements thought he needed, but it was all put to good 
use, according to a plan carefully worked out in the office at 
Iliopolis. 

Nowhere in all this, of course, was Bartelmy himself ex- 


SHODDY 


215 


ploited, or even mentioned. Naturally, his name appeared, 
with his title, though in sufficiently modest type, on booklets 
and other printed stuff; but his orders had been to stress the 
work, itself. He had faith in the occasional value of under¬ 
emphasis. Suggestion there was, in abundance, but most vis¬ 
itors went away thinking themselves discerning beyond the 
common because they said or thought that the man who was 
back of all these wonderful Methodist activities must be a 
genius in his way. 

The General Conference was well along in its third week 
when, in an afternoon session, the committee on episcopacy 
made its most important report. This fixed the number of 
episcopal residences, at home and abroad. Action had already 
been taken on a report giving the list of effective bishops, so 
that, in order to assign a bishop to each residence, it would be 
necessary to reenforce the episcopal roster by four new names. 

Bartelmy had taken no decided stand on any question that 
came before the committee on episcopacy. Yes; there had 
been one exception. As a side issue of the discussion about the 
number of new bishops to be recommended, a rather aggressive 
member of the committee had spoken of assignments. 

“They tell us,” said he, “that if we elect too many new 
bishops we shall have trouble about fixing their fields of labor. 
I don’t think so. If a man is willing to be voted for, he should 
be willing to take all the consequences, and go where he is 
sent.” 

And then, being one of those people who pride themselves on 
a nature singularly outspoken, he turned to Bartelmy. “Dr. 
Bonafede, they say you are likely to get a good vote for bishop. 
What do you think? Am I right?” 

Bartelmy had met this sort before, and knew that for such 
a man offense is ever the best defense. “I think there is truth 
in what you have told about the difficulty of making assign¬ 
ments. However, the largest number of new bishops would not 
greatly increase the work of the sub-committee on residences, 
if your principles were rigorously applied. While your refer¬ 
ence to myself is highly flattering, I hope you will not think I 
am over-stepping the proprieties when I say that any man who 
is being considered should either withdraw his name or, as a 
loyal Methodist itinerant, be prepared to accept his appoint¬ 
ment.” 


216 


SHODDY 


He thought himself reasonably safe. His loose-leaf records 
indicated that he might expect more than three hundred votes 
on the first ballot; and, with such a start, it would be strange 
if sheer momentum did not carry him well towards the two- 
thirds line in four or five ballots more. 

Viola was in her element. She improved on her experience 
when her husband had been a candidate for his secretaryship. 
As she had done then, so now she made their suite at the offi¬ 
cial hotel a place of restfulness and charm. 

Every afternoon a group of women could be found there. 
To meet them was a pleasure for any delegate; for many, an 
unexpected privilege. In the group were club women of New 
Salem and its neighboring cities, drawn to Viola by her promi¬ 
nence in the National Federation; bishops’ wives who thought, 
though they were much too wary to say, that Viola Bonafede 
would make a far more desirable addition to their number than 
the dowdy and provincial wives of certain other candidates; 
and women delegates, no little flattered by the considerately 
delicate attentions which Viola knew so well how to show. 

Missionaries and their wives were constantly dropping in, 
glad to find in America one woman who knew enough to serve 
afternoon tea; and it was not long before they asked and re¬ 
ceived permission to bring the nationals from their fields who 
were delegates to the conference. Most of them were pro-Ally, 
and what they had heard about Marcus did not make them the 
less friendly. And many a delegate whose wife had come to 
the General Conference with him found himself drafted for a 
call at the Bonafede rooms. 

“My dear,” he would be told, “I don’t know a thing about 
Dr. Bonafede, though I hear he’s one of the big men of the 
church; but he has the most charming woman for a wife; she 
was perfectly lovely to three of us women yesterday, though 
she didn’t know us from Adam. She’s got a son in the Cana¬ 
dian army, but she’s the bravest thing you ever saw. I told 
her I was going to bring you around some afternoon, and she 
was so pleased.” 

In all this, of course, no electioneering. Delegates had been 
heard to say, “Well, when I get tired of the hotel lobbies, with 
their noise and their pulling and hauling, I know where to go. 
I drop in at the Bonafede’s rooms in the Cornwall. I know he 
has a big following for the episcopacy, but you’d never guess 


SHODDY 


217 


it by anything that’s said or done where his wife is. It’s posi¬ 
tively the only place in New Salem where a fellow’s safe from 
being buttonholed.” 

Viola had seen to that. In the very first week she had come 
upon a knot of callers standing by a window, and caught 
enough of their talk to give her the opening she wanted. 

“I’m sorry if I’m being rude,” said she, “but I am so anx¬ 
ious that there shall be no mention of General Conference 
politics here. My husband’s affairs are his own, and he has no 
authority in these rooms. You see some people are so sus¬ 
picious. Why, I can scarcely have a guest to dinner, if he’s 
one of the Doctor’s friends, without being accused of sitting in 
at a caucus. And so I’d be ever so grateful if you would humor 
me. I’ll do my best to give you other things to talk about. Is 
it a bargain?” 

It was a bargain. Thereafter, every other topic of the con¬ 
ference was welcome, but the Bonafede rooms were the poor¬ 
est place in town for inventions, surmises, guesses and rumors 
about elections and appointments. The fact soon became al¬ 
most as well known as Bartelmy’s candidacy itself. 

v 

The first ballot for bishop was, as it always is, a solemn 
proceeding, befitting the momentous struggle of which it was 
the opening ceremony. Tellers were appointed, several sets of 
them. Each lot would be hard-worked before the job was 
done. Printed ballot slips had been made ready. A bishop of 
exceptional repute for piety led in fervent prayer, that none 
but men of God’s appointing might be chosen. 

Extraordinary precautions were taken to insure that the 
good bishop’s prayer should be nullified neither by ignorance 
nor by wickedness. No chance of any delegate’s voting twice, 
or being impersonated, or voting for more or less than the 
exact number to be chosen. 

The conference rose to its feet. Each man deposited his 
vote as the tellers moved through the aisles. The tellers re¬ 
tired. It was known that the counting of this first ballot would 
be a long and tedious job, for, among the 400 ministerial dele¬ 
gates, at least fifty had serious expectations, and fifty others 
hoped for and would get a nice little complimentary vote, if 
nothing more. 


218 


SHODDY 


It is the etiquette of such occasions that the most prominent 
candidates shall seem to be the least concerned. This con¬ 
vention suited Bartelmy, with his lifelong habit of protective 
coloration. He and the others made a point to give more 
than usual attention to the conference business, though this 
was harder than running away. If he had dared, he would 
have left the auditorium and hidden himself from the sight of 
man. His mind refused to follow the course of the discussions. 

Late in the afternoon session the tellers reported. “Bishop,” 
said the assistant secretary who had them in charge, “this 
ballot is so complicated and difficult that we ask permission 
to suspend work on it tonight, and to seal it until tomorrow 
morning. It would not be fair to take another ballot at the 
night session, because two important committees have unfin¬ 
ished reports, and must be absent from the session to complete 
them. As far as we have gone, there is no chance even to 
guess what the count will reveal, so that there is no danger 
of leakage.” 

Bartelmy all keyed up for the reading of the vote, slumped 
a little in his seat. Then he looked up into the balcony w 7 here 
Viola sat in her box. Her head was as high as ever, and, as 
he caught her glance, he tried to straighten up. But it was 
hard. No result! Moreover, not even a chance for some 
friend among the tellers to slip him a reassuring word. He 
knew from old experience that for a vote once counted there 
is no secrecy, all precautions notwithstanding; but evidently 
this ballot was yet a confusion of endless names. No one teller 
could have handled enough ballots to make an intelligent guess 
at the totals. 

Adjournment came, shortly after the conference had ordered 
the ballots sealed, and the friends of every prominent candi¬ 
date crowded about their favorite with words of encouragement 
and cheer. 

Bartelmy accepted his share of these well-meant attentions, 
but soon he managed to go aside with one of his assistants. 
“Scout around a little, Fred,” he ordered, “and see if there is 
anything to be had. It’s just possible somebody knows more 
than has been told.” 

In an hour Fred called him up at the Cornwall. “I’ve talked 
to a couple of tellers, Chief, and they’re easy enough, but they 
don’t agree. One of them thinks you’ll lead the list by a hun- 


SHODDY 


219 


dred; maybe that you’ll have three hundred in all. But the 
other says the pile of votes he worked on showed Watterson 
in the lead. He guesses you will have a hundred and fifty on 
this ballot. Myself, I think neither one has any idea of how 
it’s going. They did say that the number of names with a fair 
starting vote is bigger than usual, and that looks like a long 
fight. I’ll call again if I hear anything worth repeating.” 

After dinner Viola and Bartelmy talked it over. There was 
no chance during the dinner hour; the hotel dining room, where 
everybody could see and many could hear, and where people 
were forever stopping at one’s table with words of hope or con¬ 
solation or veiled commiseration, was no place to speak freely. 
The Bonafedes played the game, Viola no less competently 
than her husband, and the sharpest eyes—they tried it, never 
fear—could not detect that any struggle was on. 

Once in their rooms, Viola said, “What sort of stupidity was 
that ballot-sealing idea? I wonder if anybody is trying any 
tricks? Father would have known what it meant, if he had 
been here; he’s seen too many shifty politicians not to realize 
what such a move as that means.” 

“He never saw a Methodist General Conference in action,” 
said Bartelmy. 

“But what do you think it is?” 

“I’m stumped, and that’s the truth. Anything else I could 
find ways of handling, but a sealed, uncounted ballot— No, 
I don’t think anybody is trying to pull something off. It’s just 
one of these unforseen natural mixups.” 

“And there’s nothing you can do?” 

“Nothing. The ballot is there. Either it is favorable or it 
isn’t. If I knew which, I might keep myself busy at the ses¬ 
sion, tonight. As it is, I’m not going. I’ve got all I can do to 
get through the next twelve hours. I should be poor company 
for you, so I’m calling the hotel office in a few minutes, and 
asking for a single room somewhere off the main corridor. 
There’s no reason why you should be kept awake by my tossing 
and tumbling all night long.” 

“You don’t suppose I’ll be much inclined for sleep myself, 
do you?” Viola asked. “Why shouldn’t we face this thing to¬ 
gether?” 

“Because that will make it harder than it need be. If you’re 
alone, you’ll find some way of passing the time. I’ll do the 


220 


SHODDY 


same, wherever I am, and if either of us does happen to drop 
asleep, the other won’t spoil it.” 

Viola saw there was reason in that; for her part she meant 
to sleep if it could be managed at all. 

And so by ten o’clock Bartelmy was settled in a little room 
at the back of the hotel, high up, out of reach of everybody, 
and was digging in for a hard night. He had sent down to the 
lobby for some time-killing reading matter, and here it was 
all about him on the bed— Popular Mechanics, the Saturday 
Evening Post, the American Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly , 
Vanity Fair, and a little pile of the easiest-reading books he 
could think of—Zane Grey, Phillips Oppenheim, Peter Kyne. 

If he could sleep, very well. If not, he would need distrac¬ 
tion from his thoughts. Already his mind was turning about 
in circles. New legislation affecting his Board would make the 
next four years more dfficult than, even without it, they were 
sure to be. He knew, none better, that a reaction from the 
high-pressure results of his four years’ work was due. He 
had expected to turn that problem over to his successor. He 
had gone into the race for the episcopacy with his eyes open; 
in every way this was the most propitious year. But what if 
it turned out that he really had only about a hundred and fifty 
votes on the first ballot? Half-a-dozen others would be in the 
neighborhood of that figure, or well beyond it, and only four 
bishops were to be elected. A thousand influences might oper¬ 
ate to keep the half-dozen ahead of him, all through the voting, 
to say nothing of the dark horses which might show up on any 
ballot. 

With a sour smile he thought of what a light this would 
throw on pre-election promises. A hundred and fifty! Why, 
easily three hundred delegates had definitely assured him they 
would give him their votes, and more than a hundred others 
were as good as pledged, if assurances meant anything. These 
delegates—was it possible that two hundred of them were liars? 

It was not possible. He was in the lead, as the ballot would 
show. The tellers would be at work by six, and their report 
might be read right after the devotional exercises at eight- 
thirty. At least some one would know how it was going, so 
that by nine-thirty he could begin strengthening such of his 
lines as seemed weakest. His first vote would be four hundred 
or thereabouts, and he would need five hundred and twenty- 


SHODDY 221 

five to be sure of election. Where were those extra votes to 
come from? 

And yet, what folly to assume so easy a triumph. Probably 
his vote was low, not high. What could he or anybody do to 
start a tide of votes in his direction? He could not safely make 
new arrangements on the strength of the succession to his sec¬ 
retaryship. Already that asset had been used to point of danger. 
Each of four or five men believed himself Bonafede’s choice 
for the place. Then, again, if his vote were high, and he began 
operations on the supposition that it was low, how could he 
explain himself? 

So through the night he oscillated between assurance and 
despair. He sat half-upright in bed, with the electric light 
over his shoulder, fitfully reading, dozing, then coming broad 
awake to all manner of panic fear. He picked up a book, and 
at the end of ten minutes he was holding it open at the same 
page. The contending forces pulled him now this way, now 
that. In between he thought of Marcus, slogging away at his 
training in the Quebec mud. Then another set-to of conjec¬ 
ture, calculation, the alternation of confidence and black doubt; 
another spell of reading, followed by an uneasy doze, but al¬ 
ways with utter wakefulness close on the heels of sleep. 

At long last it was day. He dressed with unusual care, and, 
at breakfast, though he knew he showed the marks of the 
night, to Viola’s “How did you sleep?” he could say, “Oh, not 
so badly, considering. And you?” It seemed unnecessary 
to ask if Viola had slept. Any observant passer-by would have 
seen that she was far better prepared than her husband for 
what the day might bring. 

It brought the best. Often in the night he had feared the 
worst, and now he saw, with surprise at his own folly, how im¬ 
possible the worst had been. Why, as he admitted to himself, 
in his most hopeful moments he had not been sanguine enough! 
Before the devotions were ended one of his lieutenants who 
passed him in the lobby whispered out of the side of his mouth, 
“Away in the lead!” 

At ten-thirty the tellers filed in, and the bishop arose to 
read the long list of votes. He faced his duty with immense 
deliberation, while every delegate and almost every visitor sat 
tensely listening, expectant pencil in hand. Here it was! 

“Whole number of votes cast 825; defective, 6; necessary to 


222 


SHODDY 


a choice, 546. There is no election.” The bishop paused a 
moment, and asked, “What is your pleasure?” He knew quite 
well what their pleasure was, and shifted his feet for an easier 
standing position, as the Conference in strident chorus shouted, 
“Read it! The vote, the vote!” 

The chairman smote the table with his gavel, and began; 
the controlled silence of three thousand listeners made each 
clear-cut syllable audible to the farthest corner of the great 
room. 

It was a silence which lasted only while the bishop read the 
first name and its total: “Bartelmy Bonafede, 448.” Out 
roared the 448 voters, quick to applaud their own wisdom. 
To their cheers were added those of whatever spectators agreed 
with them, and of the many who are always ready to cheer 
any result, if it is of decisive quality. Delegates left their 
places and converged upon Bartelmy, with congratulations and 
assurances of ultimate victory. Up in the boxes women waved 
their handkerchiefs at Viola. 

The rest of the reading was a long and, presently, a most 
tiresome business. Only two other candidates were above the 
200 line; and, as the custom is with a first ballot, it was nec¬ 
essary to read every name, including the hundred or so which 
had received each a single vote. The conference got a measure 
of mild enjoyment out of this part of the reading. It could 
laugh at the one-vote men, and taunt them with having voted 
for themselves. 

But everybody knew that the next ballot, or, if not that, 
the third, would elect Dr. Bonafede. He needed less than a 
hundred votes. So far in the lead was he that the partisans of 
other men would vote for him just to get him out of the way; 
for three more bishops were yet to be chosen, and with such 
a lead it was easier to push Bonafede up than down. 

So it befell. The second ballot was taken immediately, and 
the second set of tellers retired to count it. The work was 
easier now, and early in the afternoon session the report came 
in. Bartelmy Bonafede, still far ahead of his nearest rival, 
was only 26 votes short of election. He got these on the next 
ballot, with some to spare, and at the close of the session Viola 
looked down from her box with shining eyes, as the little cere¬ 
mony of escorting a bishop-elect to the platform was enacted 
for the first time in this General Conference. Bishop Randolph 


SHODDY 


223 


and another were sent down to conduct her husband to his 
place among the fixed stars of the Methodist firmament. Bar- 
telmy Bonafede had arrived at the goal old Judge Dimont had 
set for him. He was Bishop Bonafede, now and forever! 

VI 

The Bonafedes had a few minutes in their room before they 
must go down to dinner. Viola showed signs of her long day 
in the box, for she had stuck as if it had been an observation 
post and she the soldier on duty there. But fatigue could be 
disregarded; this was one of the great moments. 

“Bartelmy, my dear, you’ve done it. Father knew you 
would, long ago, and he never let me forget it. Well, now, I 
want to tell you I’ve believed it myself more than ever these 
last few years. And I’ve tried to help, whenever an election 
was on. Haven’t I been of some use?” 

Bartelmy could not at once trust himself to speak. He held 
her close; he could not help the swift reflection that she had 
cared little for his work; and he remembered, too, that this 
was the first time since his election as Secretary that she had 
shown herself happy in her husband’s success. But, he thought, 
after all, her afternoons in these hotel rooms must have cost 
her something, and beyond cavil they had won not a few votes 
which had helped to swell that magnificent first ballot of his. 
If she were glad, why question the springs of her exultation? 

He kissed her, once and again; and her lips came to his 
with a readiness which aroused long-unaccustomed ardors. 

“My dear, my dear,” he said, “you have helped more than 
I had any right to ask. I’m proud of you, and grateful, past 
all words.” 

“You needn’t take it all, though, you know,” she said with 
a touch, in her tone, of the old mocking Viola. “I wasn’t doing 
it all for you; it was as much for myself—and Marcus,” she 
added, the mockery dropping out of her voice as quickly as 
it had come. “That boy! We must send him a wire to camp. 
You don’t know how proud of you he seemed that last day 
he was at home. And this will make him prouder still. But 
we must keep him feeling sure that we’re proud of him, too.” 

The wire did not reach Private Marcus Bonafede until the 
next day at noon. He was marching with his unit into Mon- 


224 SHODDY 

treal, and private telegrams to privates are notoriously subject 
to the fortunes of war. 

When it did come to him, from the last of many intermediate 
hands, and his sergeant said, “Telegram for you, Bonafede,” 
the outfit had halted for dinner. Marcus read, “Your father 
elected bishop today, first one chosen. He and I reciprocate 
your love and pride. Mother.” 

He was unable to wire back either questions or congratula¬ 
tions. The powers had ordained that troops on the eve of 
embarkation should not communicate with their people at 
home. That would be attended to after they were safe on the 
other side of the Atlantic. 

VII 

To the uninitiate, the election of bishops is General Con¬ 
ference high tide. The more devout among them, perhaps, may 
look forward to the consecration service, on Sunday. Of this, 
the Methodists, with native pragmatical inconsistency, make 
as formal and impressive a ceremony as though their bishops 
were true prelates. They are not, of course; Methodists being 
two-order Episcopalians, not three. But to most people a 
bishop is a bishop; and a solemn, ritualistic consecration to a 
lifetime work is to the unobservant quite indistinguishable from 
ordination. 

But the real moment of interest, after the elections, is the 
reading of the report by which each bishop’s residence and 
major field of labor for four years is first made public. Few 
people know of the sub-committee struggles which precede 
this reading. Bishops, like other ministers, are touched at 
times by consideration of place and prominence; and stories 
are told of tense moments in the room where a few select 
members of the committee on episcopacy wrestle with men of 
like passions with themselves who are under abnormal strain. 
Every bishop who has anything to say about his own case is 
invited to say it; and no man is assigned without first being 
consulted. 

Bartelmy’s turn came well down the list, though first among 
the new men, precedence in these matters being sacredly ob¬ 
served. When he appeared, the chairman was most courteous, 
if somewhat apologetic. 


SHODDY 


225 


“Bishop Bonafede,” he said, “of course you realize that in 
our work we meet some of the difficulties you will have to face 
by and by in dealing with the preachers; we have fewer de¬ 
sirable assignments than we have worthy men to fill them.” 

“Yes,” spoke up one of the committee, “but Bishop Bona¬ 
fede is not going to make us any trouble. I remember two 
weeks ago hearing him say that any man who let himself be 
voted on for the episcopacy should be willing to go anywhere; 
and if he wasn’t he ought to withdraw his name.” 

“I did say that,” Bartelmy agreed, “and it is my opinion 
now. Of course there may be exceptional circumstances, and 
no doubt adjustments must be sought, sometimes, which were 
not foreseen to be necessary. But I think I can say that I am 
quite at your service.” 

The chairman beamed. He had been a little worried over 
what it seemed necessary to offer Bishop Bonafede, and felt 
a corresponding relief that the task was going to be easier 
than he had feared. 

“Well, Bishop,” he said, “your highly commendable attitude 
does make our work a little less difficult. The fact is that 
because of family circumstances which must be considered in 
assigning two of the newly-elected bishops, only two places 
are available for you and Bishop Adamson. As you were 
elected before him, we are presenting the matter to you first. 
The two places are Rangoon, in Burma, and Salt Lake City. 
Each offers peculiar and even remarkable opportunities for 
such service as you are specially equipped to render. We do 
not intend to make a final decision today, but we should like 
to know, before our meeting tomorrow, whether you have any 
preference between these two places.” 

Bartelmy’s heart was suddenly heavy within him. He had 
been steeling himself against the probability of an undesirable 
assignment—for a southern city, or even Panama—but no¬ 
body had warned him how narrow the choice would actually 
be. And now, he thought grimly, it was either “on the road 
to Mandalay,” or the middle of the great American Desert. 

The committee members saw in his face, as they had seen 
in the faces of other bishops, that he was something less than 
elated over his chance to choose. After a moment longer he 
straightened up. “Brethren, this is not the sort of preference 
which may be stated quickly. Nor can I do it alone. I must 


226 


SHODDY 


talk with Mrs. Bonafede, for she will be as greatly affected as 
myself by your assignment.” 

“Certainly, bishop,” said the chairman. “As I told you, we 
do not need to decide today. You and Mrs. Bonafede will 
have tonight for consideration; all we need to ask is that you 
inform us in the morning what you would like. Then we have 
only Bishop Adamson’s desires to consider, before reaching a 
decision and bringing in our report.” 

VIII 

Many a time Bartelmy Bonafede had been forced to tell 
Viola some story of disappointment or unpleasantness. But 
never, he thought, had he been shut up to so bald and so un¬ 
welcome a statement as he must make this time. Long prac¬ 
tice had made him adept in putting the best face on disagree¬ 
able facts; today he had precious little material with which 
to work. 

He found Viola just back from a reception; obviously up¬ 
lifted. It was her first social appearance as Mrs. Bishop 
Bonafede, and she had found it good. 

“Well, my dear, and where have you been?” She kissed 
him with much more than her usual warmth. Was he not her 
bishop-husband? 

“I’ve been with the committee on episcopal assignment, and 
they are asking a hard thing of us.” He thought he might as 
well get it over with. 

“Hard? What do you mean? You’re used to hard work by 
this time.” 

“I said hard for us” her husband repeated. “You have 
as much interest in this as I have.” 

“Still I don’t get what you mean,” said Viola. “If the com¬ 
mittee had asked me, I’d tell them that some of the old bishops 
need to make way for the younger and more active men. What 
is it they want you to do?” 

Bartelmy made one effort to put the best foot foremost. 
“They say there is urgent need for the sort of work I can do, 
in just two places, and they have given us until tomorrow to 
say whether we prefer one or the other. Not that they will 
be bound by what we say, of course. They have the last 
word.” 


SHODDY 


227 


“Is that so? And what two places?” She was still thinking 
in terms of those important cities in which resided the few 
bishops she knew. 

“One is Salt Lake City; and the other is Rangoon, in 
Burma.” 

Viola stared; then she laughed, but without mirth. “Ran¬ 
goon? Never heard of it in my life. Salt Lake City I know; 
it’s impossible, of course. The other—where in the world is 
it?” 

Bartelmy tried a feeble jocularity. “You’ll think it isn’t in 
the world at all. It’s the capital of Burma, in what used 
to be called Farther India. It is under the British flag. We 
have a very large work in Burma and the countries near by, 
and I understand that the British make a good deal of fuss 
over our resident bishop. In England bishops are personages, 
you know.” 

“Maybe so. But Bart, is it possible that you have no other 
choice? Are you compelled to go to one of these two awful 
places? Isn’t there some chance of a protest? You have 
influence in many quarters. Can’t you get somebody to tell 
the committee how ridiculous it is to think of sending you 
where nobody could amount to anything?” 

“I’m afraid I can’t. This committee has large powers; its 
decision is not likely to be questioned. Other men who have 
more influence than I are powerless before it. All we can do 
is to say which we’d like. I guess it’s settled that we go to one 
of these two places.” 

“For how long?” 

“Well, of course, no assignment is made for more than one 
quadrennium.” 

“Four years!” Viola was beginning to get angry. Bartelmy 
recognized the signs, in her half-closed eyes and straight, thin 
lips. “And is this what I’ve worked for; to be stuck in a 
foreign fever-hole or out among the Mormons? I’ve kissed fat 
sisters and flattered fat-headed brethren all this month until 
I could shriek; I’ve toadied for days to people my father could 
have bought body and soul with a round-trip pass to Denver. 
And it was my father who told me, ‘Take my word for it, 
Bonafede will be a bishop some day.’ Sure enough, you are. 
Bishop of Salt Lake! Bishop of Monsoon or Borneo or what¬ 
ever the other horrible place is!” 


228 


SHODDY 


She stopped for breath, and when it came she started again. 
Bartelmy stood dully before the storm; Viola in anger always 
dismayed him, and this time he had no evasion, no equivocal 
word, which might serve to abate or turn aside her wrath. 

“You’re Bishop Bonafede, all right. And what’s the use, 
if you’re to be buried? Is this what you have been scheming 
for, and running all over the country for, and playing one 
man against another for, and begging votes for, and using me 
as bait for? How does it happen that you could get five hun¬ 
dred delegates to vote for you, and yet you can’t get a handful 
of men to give you a decent assignment?” 

“But, my dear,” Bartelmy put in, “the work in these places 
must be done. We have missions and missionaries in that part 
of Asia about Rangoon, and we have churches and pastors in 
all the intermountain country around Salt Lake City. Some¬ 
body must go to supervise all that work.” 

“Work? Rubbish! All work has to be done, by somebody. 
I know that well enough. But it needn’t be you. Let the 
people do it who love it, or the people who can’t do anything 
else. Why didn’t you fix this long ago? Didn’t you know 
beforehand that it would have to be faced after the elections?” 

“Why, yes; everybody knows that,” said Bartelmy. “But 
no man who’s being mentioned for bishop dares try to pick 
out his assignment before he’s elected. It would be the end 
of his chances. His enemies would jump at the story, and he 
would be done for.” He was speaking the simple truth, and 
even Viola saw the force of the explanation. 

“Well then,” she asked, still angry, “why do they insist on 
sending a man like you to one of these jumping-off places? 
You were the first man elected. Isn’t there something in that?” 

“There would be, my dear, if nothing else had to be con¬ 
sidered. But one of the new bishops has children to educate, 
and the family of another is very young and sickly. Adam¬ 
son has his old mother to care for; you and I seem to be freer 
from personal and family obligations than these others. The 
chairman of the committee told me that this was the situation, 
though of course I knew it before.” 

Viola pulled herself together. After all, she was the wife of 
a bishop, and if she could find a way out of this initial diffi¬ 
culty she could still have her career. If circumstances made 
a difference, the thing to do was to discover some. That would 


SHODDY 229 

take thinking, and you can’t enjoy the luxury of anger if you 
want to think. 

“Well, see here, Bart,” she said, “I consider the whole busi¬ 
ness is a rotten shame, but some of it can’t be helped, and 
some of it can. We’ve got to find some good reason why you 
should be given a better assignment, that’s all.” 

“What reason can we offer? Our affairs are well known. 
Marcus is in the war. We have nobody dependent on us. 
How can we find any excuse that will hold water?” 

“I don’t know,” she snapped. “But quit being so helpless 
and so meek. You’ve got brains, haven’t you?” 

Bartelmy would not deny that, but his opinion of his own 
cleverness had never been so low. 

“Children; we can’t use that,” she prompted him. “Go 
on. Marcus is off to the war, and it makes no difference to 
him where we go. Parents? Nothing in that, now that moth¬ 
er and father are gone. Which reminds me. Has father’s 
lawyer written you lately? He should have.” 

“Why, yes; there was a letter came during the elections; 
I meant to show it to you, but we’ve been so occupied. It’s 
in my portfolio at the exhibit.” 

“What does he say?” 

“He wants me to come to Kansas City and go over all the 
records with him; sign papers and all that. Says he can’t act 
alone, since I’m co-executor under the will, and there are 
complications.” 

“Well, we can think about them later. Does he say it will 
take long?” 

“He seems to be anxious about that. I guess we ought to 
go as soon as we can get away from here, and have a good 
long session with him. We can get a much clearer notion of 
what’s to be done than by letter. He says things are pretty 
badly mixed.” 

“I’m not surprised. Dad was always careless about his own 
business affairs, and he was in a good many. But they’ll 
untangle.” 

“If we find we must go to Rangoon—” 

“WE go to Rangoon!” Viola blazed up again. “Bartelmy 
Bonafede, you must be crazy. Don’t think for one minute 
that I’m going out there. You may have to be bishop in Ran- 


230 SHODDY 

goon, but I’m not intending to go to a place like that, even 
to be the bishop’s wife.” 

“I was just about to say, dear,” he interposed, seeking.to 
mitigate the storm, “that if we find the committee seems in¬ 
clined that way, perhaps we might ask for some considerable 
delay, so that I could settle your father’s estate before leaving 
the country. And that might be the deciding factor. If Bishop 
Adamson can leave his mother at all, he might be sent to Asia 
rather than keep the Rangoon place vacant for several months.” 

“There’s some sense in that,” said Viola, quieting down 
again. “That may be our way out. Are you sure that it’s a 
choice between this Rangoon and Salt Lake City?” 

“Why, yes; that was the way they put it; they’ll decide 
on one or the other, tomorrow.” 

“Well, I could stand it to go to Salt Lake City for a while, 
maybe; because after all it’s possible to get back to civiliza¬ 
tion now and then. Of course I take it your own preference is 
for Utah? Or does it stir your English heart to think of being 
a bishop in a country where you might be called ‘my lord’?” 

Bartelmy ignored the sneer. He had been trying to lead up 
to a recognition of Utah as the lesser evil, and Viola, with her 
usual directness, had voiced the precise reason which to him 
had seemed most cogent. But it was better to let the decision 
be hers. 

So he said, “Why yes, my dear, I do think it would be better 
for us to stay in this country. I very much doubt the wisdom 
of sending middle-aged men to foreign stations, anyway; we 
have seen some unhappy results of that policy. Adamson is 
younger. All things considered, I am sure you are right in 
preferring Salt Lake City. It will give us both a considerable 
opportunity for travel. I shall be away a good deal on church 
business, and it makes a good impression, when a bishop has 
the right sort of wife, if she goes with him to some of the 
more important functions.” 

Viola’s imagination needed no broader hint. She had not 
often chosen to travel with her husband in his secretarial 
journeys, because there was nothing for her in the endless 
committee sessions and other purely business or mass-meeting 
affairs to which he had given himself. But a bishop’s travels 
are different. With Burma out of the way, she could see in¬ 
stantly how the desert isolation could be tempered. She cared 


SHODDY 


231 


nothing for Oriental travel; it had always seemed more trouble 
than pleasure; and the American scene had not yet bored her. 

“Then we may as well call it settled. I hope you’ll make 
it your business to convince the committee tomorrow that 
your special gifts are needed in Salt Lake City.” 

IX 

Not in those words, naturally, but quite as convincingly, 
Bishop Bonafede on the morrow presented his case to the sub¬ 
committee. 

“I had not thought it necessary to mention, heretofore,” he 
said when he faced the little group with the large powers, “that 
I am one of the executors of my late father-in-law’s estate. 
But Judge Dimont had many and rather complex interests, 
and the work of settling up his affairs, in which, of course, my 
wife is directly concerned, is likely to be rather tedious. It will 
be most desirable,, for several months or a year, that I should 
be within call of Kansas City, which would be impossible if 
we set out at once for a foreign residence. Please remember 
that I hold to my original pledge, and stand ready to obey the 
orders of my church. Not only that, but my interests in the 
foreign field is second to that of no bishop in the Board. I 
do not asked to be excused from Rangoon. But, if you do 
decide that I should be assigned to that residence, I shall be 
compelled to ask permission, in fairness to Mrs. Bonafede, to 
remain in this country a reasonable length of time, so that I 
may attend to the business I have referred to.” 

Most of the committee took this little speech at its face 
value. One said, “Of course we do not desire to do anything 
that would embarrass you in your duties toward your wife’s 
interests. I wonder if Bishop Adamson has anything as im¬ 
portant as this to keep him in this country.” 

To which the chairman, “I have seen Bishop Adamson, and 
he assures me that his mother will bid him God-speed. He 
asks only to be told where we think he should go. He says 
he is ready to start within a month if need be.” 

That was all. Except that one member of the committee, 
later, confided to a friend, “You’ve got to hand it to Bonafede. 
I know he hated like sin to go to either of those two places. 
But did he say so? Not much; he made the committee think 


232 


SHODDY 


he was denying himself a privilege and bravely shouldering a 
duty. He’s the same old Bonafede, only more so.” 

Bartelmy Bonafede was at his office, busy with the packing 
up of his personal effects, when the postman brought a card 
from Marcus: “Dear Folks: This card will be mailed to you 
when our outfit has landed at a European port. I am well, 
and will write at the first opportunity. Much love. Marcus.” 

The bishop called Viola on the telephone. Immediately after 
the election she had begun to worry about the absence of any 
word from her son. It was not like the boy, to pay no atten¬ 
tion to her messages, and anyhow he would have answered 
that telegram about the honor that had come to his father. 
Not yet had she learned that the war, not his people, now 
possessed her boy, and other mothers’ boys. 

When she heard the card’s brief message read, Viola was 
not satisfied. “Is that all? It doesn’t sound like Marcus. Too 
short. Have you any idea where he is?” 

Naturally, Bartelmy had no idea. He did make a guess, hav¬ 
ing read a little about the Canadian contingent in the British 
army. “He’s in a training camp in England somewhere,” he 
said; “not far from the south coast, probably; maybe on Salis¬ 
bury Plain. He’ll hardly get to France until late in the summer. 
We’re sure to hear from him in a week or so.” 

Which Viola, nowise content, must needs accept as the best 
comfort available. It was as much as other mothers got; 
though why that should be adduced as a consolation none of 
them ever understood. 

Advices from Salt Lake City assured Bishop Bonafede that 
he and the work would be just as well off if the formal advent 
of the Bonafedes were deferred until early September. That 
suited him well, and Viola better. She had no intention of 
spending large portions of her time in Utah, and was quite 
willing that Utah should assume the responsibility for as much 
of her absence as it would, if that could be arranged without 
loss of official favor. 

She wrote once a week to Marcus, though his letters to her 
came at much longer intervals. He was in France, somewhere 
near Havre, (she conjectured), and thought that soon he would 
be up at the front. It was the summer of the Somme and Ver¬ 
dun, and the Allies were needing men. 

Of all this of course he wrote little, and for two reasons. 


SHODDY 


233 


He knew only so much as he was told, and if he guessed more 
he was taking no chances with the army censorship. He wrote 
cheerfully enough, filling the pages with abundance of light 
but not undiscerning gossip of his comrades in arms as they 
lived the life of the civilian-soldier in the last stages of training. 

To Viola each letter was a respite; her boy was not yet 
under fire, and anything might happen to save him from 
that ordeal. The war might even be over soon; there were 
those who saw in the Battle of the Somme, at first, the begin¬ 
ning of the end. 

Bartelmy, recognizing that Marcus had something of a 
knack with his pen, passed parts of his letters over to two or 
three newspaper men of his acquaintance, and thus began the 
modest vogue of a new writer. Editors here and there soon 
recognized behind the signature “Marcus Bonafede” one of 
the young fellows who were finding new and refreshing ways of 
writing about the incidental aspects of the war. 

x 

With most of Tech closed for the summer, the question 
before Peter Middleton took acuter form than ever. What 
of the future? Money, and ever more money, must be had. 
This thing to which he had given himself had little if any 
place in the thought of the church. By some educators, them¬ 
selves driven to desperation by the mounting costs of their 
church schools, it was looked upon with no small jealousy. It 
was deemed an interloper, a diverter of contributions sorely 
needed by the colleges over which the church had more or less 
control. 

And yet Peter saw that unless he could get a building, he 
had gone almost as far as he could go. The old church was 
not simply inadequate; it was repellent. Only a student who 
could ignore his surroundings for the sake of something not 
so obvious, though more precious, would endure the cramped 
and crazy quarters which were all that the Fellowship could 
boast. 

When the new building came, as it did, Peter was the most 
astonished individual of them all. He had everything to do 
with it, of course, but, on the surface, the actual capture of 
what at last became one of the most beautiful buildings on 
or near the Tech campus seemed largely to be Rhoda’s achieve- 


234 


SHODDY 


ment. And even she did not know how it happened until the 
impossible had become a certificate of deposit for a sum 
never to be mentioned save in awed and tremulous whispers. 

She had gone home for a visit with Marie Leyton, class¬ 
mate, and devoted member of the Oxford Fellowship; and 
found herself in a “perfect duck” of a farm home near Archer- 
ville, in the heart of the Corn Belt. 

Rhoda had not known many farmhouses, but this one 
seemed, even to her, much above the level of farmers’ homes. 
Still she had other things to think of, and easily followed 
Marie’s matter-of-fact acceptance of these better than comfort¬ 
able surroundings. 

Marie’s father she found well worth talking to. In a day 
the two of them had discovered themselves kindred spirits. 
Rhoda delighted in the range and alertness of Mr. Leyton’s 
interest in life, and he went out of his way to set her going 
on the subject of the Fellowship. He assumed the blankest 
ignorance of the whole matter, and insisted on detailed ex¬ 
planations of its every ramification, from the theory back of it 
to the smallest incident of its daily contact with the Meth¬ 
odist students at Tech. 

“I can understand religion at a Methodist college,” he said 
to her one day, “but what right have you, young lady, to be 
imposing your ideas on a state school?” 

“Not on a state school, but on the students in it who came 
out of Methodist homes and churches, and who ought to go 
back to them when they are done with school.” 

“Yes, I see. But I went to Ohio Wesleyan; it was in the 
great days, too. What’s the matter with putting a little more 
religious influence into our own colleges, where we have no¬ 
body to say we mustn’t?” 

“Sure,” said Rhoda. “But there’s nobody at Tech to tell 
us we mustn’t, either. And what if we should stop with our 
own schools? In your time maybe we could. But how about 
your own girl? You didn’t send her to Ohio Wesleyan, or any 
Methodist school. Does that mean you accept as final that 
Methodism is done with her?” 

“Well, there’s a matter of circumstances to be considered 
when you talk about Marie,” said Mr. Leyton. “I wasn’t 
asked, if the truth must be told, where she should go. She 
wanted some work she can get at Tech, but not in any Meth- 


SHODDY 


235 


odist school she could hear about; you know better than I 
do what it is; and Mother and I sort of like to let her have 
her own way when we can. But no; I’m not ready to consent 
that Methodism is through with her, or she with Methodism. 
She’s a good girl; and she’s all we have.” 

“She’s a darling. Dad depends on her for help I’m no good 
at. I’ve got a sort of dumb religion; can’t talk about it to 
anybody. She can, and she does, in a perfectly wonderful 
way. There’s many a girl at Tech who has found out what 
personal Christianity is and what it means, just by talking it 
out with Marie.” 

“I’m glad of that,” said Marie’s father, “but I’m not sur¬ 
prised. Her mother’s that way; always has been. You should 
see the hold she has on Archerville. But I’m like you. I 
never could talk five minutes about what I know better than 
I know anything else.” 

“Well, Mr. Leyton, there you are. At Tech we have nearly 
a thousand students from Methodist homes, who’ve gone there 
for much the same reasons as Marie. You can’t tell them to 
stay away; Tech belongs to the whole state, and Methodists 
are citizens. So the church is following them. And—Oh, I 
wish you could see what is beginning to happen already. Won’t 
you come over some time this fall and see for yourself?” 

But then Rhoda thought of the stuffy little church, with 
its cheap and battered furnishings. “No; I’m not sure we 
want you yet. Somebody who has more money than he needs 
is going to give us a building before many months; he’s got 
to. We can’t wait much longer. And when he does!—I’ll send 
you a special invitation, signed by Dad—and myself. I’m his 
partner, you know.” 

“Not his silent partner, either,” chuckled Aaron Leyton. 
“But you certainly pull your own weight in the boat, and 
more. I wonder who will be the happy man to give you that 
building.” 

“So do I; but there is such a man. There must be. If there 
wasn’t, there would be a terrible vacuum in the history of the 
Oxford Fellowship, and you know nature abhors a vacuum!” 

XI 

Soon after Rhoda’s return, Peter Middleton received a mys¬ 
tifying letter from Aaron Leyton of Archerville: “Please keep 


236 


SHODDY 


this dark, but when can you come over and talk about some¬ 
thing in which we are both immensely interested? Don’t say 
anything to your daughter about it, or to anybody else. Just 
come.” 

Peter could travel anywhere, on short notice, but the letter’s 
reference to Rhoda disturbed him for a moment. Not that 
he had any fear of anything she had done or said. But she 
might even have met somebody who was showing too great 
an interest in her future. And, though he would not interfere, 
the very thought distressed him. How could he do without his 
Rhoda? 

The cheeriness of Aaron Leyton’s welcome as Peter stepped 
from the train was reassuring. Nothing serious could be the 
matter. He led the way to a large touring car, of much better 
make than most farmers can manage, and they were soon at 
the farm. Peter’s practiced eye saw a good deal more than 
Rhoda’s “duck of a farmhouse;” improvements and equip¬ 
ments far beyond the needs of the farm, as a farm; the marks 
of so leisurely and opulent a country life as no farmer could 
support by merely farming, no matter how wisely. 

The thing was over in half an hour. Peter thought, later, 
of Browning’s “two points in the adventure of the diver;” 

One, when a pauper he prepares to dive; 

Then, when a prince, he rises with his pearl. 

Aaron Leyton went straight to the heart of his business. 
“Mr. Middleton,” he began, “your daughter Rhoda said she’d 
not ask me to visit your work until you had the assurance of 
a new building. But she was too late. I’ve visited it twice 
already, when you were away. Nobody knew I was there, not 
even Marie. I went to the President of Tech, and he told me 
some things. Several professors told me more. And so did one 
or two students, who let an old fellow pester them with ques¬ 
tions that seemed foolish. I’ve put everything I found out 
alongside Rhoda’s philosophy of the Oxford Fellowship;—and 
now I’m ready to talk wth you about investing in what you 
are doing. There’s money enough. I’ve owned some poor land 
in Oklahoma these twenty years, and about five years ago it 
began to produce a crop I never suspected. Yes; oil. I’m not 
yet used to the way oil means money, and because I’m natur¬ 
ally a poor talker, very few know a thing about it. What I’ve 
seen of other people who got rich quick and got no fun out 


SHODDY 


237 


of it has scared me. Now the wells on my land are not gushers, 
and never have been, but they don’t stop. And Mother and I 
have been uneasy in our minds about it. We didn’t earn that 
money, and we can’t find ways of spending it on ourselves, 
even if we were sure we had the right. But we think, Mother 
and I, that we’ve found one way to spend it that nobody can 
fault; and that’s for your Fellowship. Now you talk; it’s 
years since I made a speech as long as that.” 

What could Peter say? Meeting difficulties had been no 
special trouble; but to meet this situation he had no prece¬ 
dents whatever. So he said, simply, “Your thought is most 
generous, Mr. Leyton.” 

“No, not that;” demurred the farmer. “It seems to me 
sort of selfish; and yet a good sort of selfishness, maybe. I 
guess there are good ways even of being selfish. I’d enjoy 
having a hand in this business. But let’s get down to the 
next thing. What should we do first?” 

“Most people would say that we need a church building 
first of all. What we have is hopeless.” 

“I know. And if you say so, a church it is. But I’m not 
so sure that comes first. I’ve talked with Marie, and still 
more with Rhoda, and with those students who told me more 
than they thought. I’ve come to wonder if the thing you ought 
to have first isn’t just a real good place; something like a big 
‘Y’ building that’s been fixed up by folks instead of secretaries. 
I mean a place you can make homey and friendly and useful 
all day, every day; with two or three big living rooms, and 
study rooms, and rooms to rest in, and an assembly hall with 
a stage, and all sorts of other fixings that the students don’t 
get in their boarding houses or even in the fraternities. And, 
though I’m just a farmer, with no claim to any skill, I’d like 
to have a hand in the business of getting such a building 
planned and put up. I’m not stubborn, so the architect 
wouldn’t find me in the way, nor the contractor; but I want 
to see something like this done for these young folks, and 
working at it off and on would sort of mean more than just 
signing checks. Do you see what I mean?” 

Peter did, and trembled with the vision. If it was not some 
momentary delirium it was something else unreal that was 
happening to him; even to think about it brought an exhilara¬ 
tion touched with exquisite pain. 


238 


SHODDY 


When he came down out of this third heaven, the actual¬ 
ities, so far from dimming in the light of sober day, became 
yet more glowing and alluring. A middle-aged farmer was 
proposing to the Oxford Fellowship the erection of a clubhouse 
to cost anything from one hundred to a hundred and fifty 
thousand dollars. And the offer was backed by real money. 
It did not seem true; it merely was true. 

Peter had expected that Rhoda, when she heard what was 
to come, would take refuge either in hysterics or. cold in¬ 
credulity. Instead, after the first joyful outburst, in which 
Peter’s hair and collar and necktie suffered shamefully, she 
merely said, “Well, Dad, you may be a preacher; but I’m a 
prophet. I told you this thing had to come. And I told Mr. 
Leyton, too. I wonder how much of it he knew already? Not 
that I dreamed he was the man. Still, it does no harm to talk 
about your hopes, if people want to listen, does it, Daddy?” 

Which was the nearest Rhoda ever came to claiming any 
credit for “Leyton Center.” 

With the promise of the great gift, in the fall the Fellow 7 - 
ship took on new life. Money brings money; better still, it 
brings confidence. People who had stood aloof when the ven¬ 
ture was merely a venture, now took heart of grace and 
began to believe in it. 


xn 

As a rule, a bishop is hardly a bishop in his first confer¬ 
ences. He is self-conscious; he tries to seem at ease and suc¬ 
ceeds only in showing what an effort he is making. He is 
pathetically anxious not merely to produce a good impression, 
but to be different from all the other bishops. In the nature 
of things this is difficult, because all the bishops deal with a 
regimented and routine procedure, and inevitably he reminds 
the more seasoned preachers sitting before him of some older 
bishop whom, in his attempt to escape from the levels of epis¬ 
copal mediocrity, he is copying unaware. 

Because the chief interest is focused on the assigning of the 
preachers to their posts of duty, all new bishops announce that 
their administrations will be democratic. They will not play 
the tyrant. One says that he proposes to maintain an open 
shop. Another avow T s his readiness to see any brother, layman 


SHODDY 


239 


or minister, at any hour of the day or night. Another fixes a 
deadline. “Until Saturday at six, I am open to any suggestion 
or request whatever. After that I must be permitted to reach 
my own conclusions.” Another says that no brother’s appoint¬ 
ment will be decided upon until after he has been consulted. 
And so on. 

This worship of democracy is, necessarily, lip-service. The 
church, autocratically organized, is a democracy just so long 
as there is no need for the exercise of the autocrat’s powers. 
But because democracy often fails, and cannot help but fail, 
there is the episcopal prerogative, and, with no matter what 
show of regard for the individual, the great iron wheel turns, 
as turn it must. 

This explains why Methodism does not fall into fragments. 
Also it explains why every conference has more than one man 
with a grievance; a man who could not or did not get out of 
the wheel’s way when it began to turn. These men think and 
say it was the bishop’s fault. A machine has the defects of its 
qualities, and because Methodism, ecclesiastically, is a most 
efficient machine, of necessity it seems often to be cruel. But 
machinery is not cruel; it is—machinery. 

Bishop Bonafede had a somewhat easier time than the 
other bishops of his year. In his two conferences of the fall 
he displayed the facility of an old hand. He had not been 
picking up unconsidered trifles at conferences these twenty 
years without profit. The smoothness of his work in the con¬ 
ferences which gave him his tryout was observed of all. The 
older men gave outspoken praise to his ease and readiness. 
They heard, without quite placing them, a hundred tags of 
conventional episcopal speech; they saw without recognition 
a hundred professionalisms which were the quintessential resi¬ 
due of Bonafede’s borrowing from every bishop since Newman 
and Fowler. 

Bonafede had observed episcopal technique through the 
years until he had become familiar with its faults as well as 
its excellences. He had watched his bishops tirelessly; he had 
noted in their public address the phrases, tones, postures which 
seemed to him most episcopally effective, and, no less care¬ 
fully, those which he saw were useless, and especially those 
which affected people unpleasantly. He would know what to 
avoid. 


240 


SHODDY 


The only case which gave him any concern in his first con¬ 
ferences was that of a rising young preacher named Mellish. 
Mellish had been three years in a small suburban church, and 
the district superintendent reported him a success in every 
way. “But he’s a trifle radical in his social and political views, 
Bishop,” said the superintendent in the cabinet meeting, “and 
he’s quite a leader among theological school graduates in the 
conference.” 

Bishop Bonafede was writing, as he often was in these cabi¬ 
net sessions. He thought it good policy to let the superin¬ 
tendents do as much of the spade work as they would, reserving 
his interference for the cases on which they did not find agree¬ 
ment easy. He heard the first part of the superintendent’s 
comment without heeding it, but the closing sentence brought 
his mind to attention. 

“What’s your difficulty about young Mellish? Doesn’t he 
go back?” 

“That’s the trouble, Bishop. He can go back all right; his 
people like him better than any preacher they have had these 
dozen years, and he’s their sixth. But a committee is here from 
St. Edwards, in my town, and the committee is greatly taken 
with Mellish. Burghamann is leaving, as you know, and they 
say they’ll not consider any other man if there’s any chance 
for them to get Mellish. He’d be a good man for them, too, 
even though he does seem a trifle young. But the young fel¬ 
lows from the seminaries—well, you know what boys talk in 
their first ten years of the ministry, and often they take their 
cue from Mellish. I fear that there would be unpleasant things 
said by some of the older brethren if you appointed him. 
Won’t you have a talk with him, and see if you can get him to 
see that St. Edwards is a little too big for him just yet? If 
he’ll say he thinks it best he should not go, the committee will 
not be able to insist on his appointment. That should make 
them less difficult to persuade that your man Cavendish is the 
preacher for them.” 

Bishop Bonafede sent for Mellish. He felt that it would be 
one of those uncomfortable interviews which he avoided when¬ 
ever he could, by whatever specious device was handiest at 
the moment. But already he had learned that there was no 
evading an occasional encounter with a difficult preacher or a 
pertinacious committee. When it must come, he put on for the 


SHODDY 


241 


occasion his best manner, almost pontifical, and with a show 
of man-to-man frankness that worked admirably with most of 
those to whom he must speak on unpleasant subjects. 

He guessed that Arthur Mellish could not be fitted into 
any of the classifications which the bishop found useful in 
sorting the men he had to deal with. He was not susceptible 
to the ordinary allurements. Bishop Bonafede saw himself 
almost forced to speak exactly as he felt, and that was a com¬ 
pulsion he never enjoyed. 

When Mellish came into the room, the two men exchanged 
greetings pleasantly enough, though neither expected warmth 
from the other. 

“Brother Mellish,” the Bishop began, most abruptly for him, 
“do you know why it is not easy to give you the promotion 
which your friends think you ought to have?” 

. “No, Bishop,” Mellish said, “I don’t, though I have my 
theory. But what does it matter? I don’t need to know. You 
have your way of doing things, and I have mine. You happen 
to be my official superior, and if my ways don’t suit you, the 
power is in your hands.” 

“But, Brother Mellish,” the other protested, “for your own 
sake I think you ought to be told just what the trouble is. 
The Methodist ministry, as you have always known, is a gen¬ 
uine brotherhood, and we are members one of another. If I 
have the power, as you say, is it not my duty to use it for 
the good of the whole body? So I feel that I must have this 
talk with you.” 

“As you please, Bishop.” 

It was as the bishop had feared. Mellish was not inclined 
to be placable. Very well, he should be told what the trouble 
was, though even now it would be spoken kindly. Kindness of 
manner was never incompatible with the Bonafede purpose. 

“You do not make it any easier for me, Brother Mellish. 
But the fact is that people have a good deal to say about the 
way in which you express your somewhat radical views. Your 
views are not so very dangerous, in themselves. Since my first 
pastorates I have held opinions not unlike your own. Before 
their expression could interfere seriously with my work, how¬ 
ever, I had found that it is not as simple a thing as I had 
thought to get immediate results, and I began to modify, not 
my opinions, of course, but my methods of making them 


242 SHODDY 

known. That seems to be the point at which you have diffi¬ 
culty.” 

Mellish was too surprised, at first, for any inner adjustment 
to this approach. He had known of the bishop all his minis¬ 
terial days, and lately had been trying to study him at first 
hand. But here was a Bonafede he had not seen before, a 
bishop with his guard down, confessing to the possession of ad¬ 
vanced ideas, and admitting that he had denatured them for 
public consumption. As Mellish got his wits together, he began 
to feel that he would enjoy this interview, after all. So he 
merely nodded, while the other paused to note the effect of 
what he had said. And then he took up the theme again. “I 
have all manner of sympathy with the working classes. Per¬ 
haps you do not know how much I had to do with the bishops’ 
pronouncement on social and industrial conditions.” 

“No, I don’t,” Mellish admitted. “Was that statement 
yours?” 

“Well, not as it finally appeared, of course. I cannot say I 
think its published wording entirely judicious. My work was 
done while the first outline was under consideration. The last 
revision was entrusted to the hands of one of the brethren 
who, I regret to say, has too little consideration for the judg¬ 
ment and even the feelings of important people. He was in¬ 
judiciously specific, while I had confined myself to abstract 
principles.” 

“You mean that he talked straight, as I have been trying 
to do?” 

“I must not be drawn into criticism of my colleagues, es¬ 
pecially to you; but I mean, Brother Mellish, that when we 
are considering questions which are in controversy, questions 
on which we are not experts, and about which there are di¬ 
vergences of view in the church, we cannot afford to wound 
and antagonize some of our leading laymen. We depend on 
them for large support of our church and its enterprises, and 
naturally they wonder why their gifts should be welcomed 
when their ideas, yes, and their sacred convictions, are so 
needlessly flouted.” Here the bishop felt he must be quoting, 
but the author’s name did not occur to him. 

“Of course you understand, Bishop, that I don’t seek their 
money, in any church I serve, if they have the notion that 


SHODDY 243 

I am no more than a hired fiddler, and that they can call the 
tune because they pay.” 

“Your metaphor is ungenerous, Brother Mellish, but you 
have touched on one of my embarrassments. I could send you 
to St. Edwards, but the new enterprise there, and the special 
missionary work which the church has long supported, depend 
largely on the interest and favor of a few generous men of 
large means. You would be acceptable in almost every way, 
for you have a pulpit ability which such a church knows how 
to appreciate and to reward. But it is the uncertainty about 
what you might say, and how you might say it, on industrial 
questions and similar subjects, which makes your appointment 
difficult.” 

Mellish tried a straight question. “Are you intending to 
tell me that I ought to modify my ethical and social standards 
for the sake of an appointment?” 

“Brother Mellish, that again is ungenerous. I am not ask¬ 
ing you to change your opinions, and certainly not to offend 
your conscience, for, as I have intimated, I have much sym¬ 
pathy with some of your views. In fact, I share them, at 
least in part. The difficulty is one of method. I could send 
you to St. Edwards, as I say, but in your present mental con¬ 
dition I know you would not be happy there. If you would 
make up your mind to be cautious, to phrase your criticisms 
of the present social order in more conciliatory and perhaps 
more courteous terms, men who do not see things as you do 
would not be so inclined to take offense. And you know well 
enough that you cannot do much with people who are offended 
at your teaching.” 

“No,” said Mellish; “that is an old difficulty.” 

“It is,” the bishop agreed, ignoring the allusion, if he saw 
it, “but it can be overcome. I think I can say, without undue 
egotism, that I have nearly always found a way.” 

“Bishop”—Mellish spoke, the other thought, with uncalled- 
for feeling—“at that point I agree with you absolutely. You 
have always found a way. But you beat me there, as at many 
another point. I can’t. If that is what St. Edwards or any 
other new appointment means, I can’t take it, that’s all. I’ll 
stay where I am. I’m happy enough there.” 

“Well,” the bishop’s voice took on once more its honeyed 
accents, since he saw a chance to take Mellish’s admission as 


244 


SHODDY 


his cue to end the interview without a scene; “well, Brother 
Mellish, you must learn. I am sure you have capacity enough. 
I can see how it would be impossible for me to compel you to 
go to St. Edwards, now that I have it from your own lips 
that you would not be happy there. But in a year or two, when 
the memory of last year is not so fresh, I can do something 
for you, either in this conference or some other, which, with 
your unusual ability and your commendable habits of study, 
will more nearly satisfy your ambitions. I shall be glad to do 
what I can next year, even, if the situation improves. Come 
and see me at any time;” and he rose and held out his hand, 
softly plump and beautifully groomed. 

Mellish took it, but that was all. He had wanted to speak 
boldly, even defiantly, or else to watch the bishop entangle 
himself in one contradiction after another. And somehow the 
initiative had slipped away from him. Perhaps it had never 
been his. Even if he had found the opening, what could he 
have said that would have pierced through the protecting folds 
of this man’s complacency? 

The next day Bishop Bonafede saw the committee from St. 
Edwards. “I am sorry,” he said to the brethren, “but I have 
talked with Brother Mellish, and he practically told me he 
would be unhappy to leave his present work. I do not feel it 
wise in view of that to urge the St. Edwards appointment on 
him. There are conditions into which I am not at liberty to 
go, which, he believes, and I am more than inclined to agree 
with him, would prevent him from doing his best work there. 
You see how it is; I would be glad to comply with your wishes, 
and perhaps next year the situation will be such that I can. 
You know you may count on me to do my utmost. But Brother 
Mellish himself has put his name outside the range of possi¬ 
bilities.” 

And with different emphasis, two men who scarcely knew 
one another, Austin Mellish, the preacher, and Beechwood, the 
lawyer from St. Edwards, were saying, each to himself, “Score 
another for Bonafede. How does he do it?” 

XIII 

In the matter of “Leyton Center,” desire, among the people 
of the Oxford Fellowship, trod close on the heels of caution. 
Peter and Mr. Leyton were as anxious as the most eager fresh- 


SHODDY 


245 


man to see actual construction started, but there was a sort of 
haste which above all other mistakes they feared. 

Wonderful to see was the fine agreement of these two. Not 
in the little things, but in the large; general architectural 
form, equipment, furnishings, scope of activities, flexibility of 
plan, provision to utilize new wisdom as it might be vouch¬ 
safed,—on all this they were of the same mind. And they knew 
it would take weeks and months to find their architect, study 
with him all the aspects of the problem, and make decisions 
which must be expressed in a building to stand long beyond 
their time. 

While all this was being done, the Fellowship flourished, not 
so much in spite of its present limitations as because of them. 
Its cramped quarters and crowded schedules, soon to be num¬ 
bered among the things that were, could now be endured with 
something more than fortitude. The Methodist students at 
Tech in T6-T7 looked on themselves—and do to this day— 
as pioneers, living in the great days of privations which tried 
men’s souls. Some day their reminiscences may become even 
a little boring. 

But even these pioneers felt that it was possible to have 
too much of a good thing, and grew impatient at the delay in 
beginning actual construction. In the early months of ’17, pro¬ 
tracted study and consultation had resulted in a plan for Ley- 
ton Center,—it was to be a noble pile in collegiate Gothic; 
hollow square in ground plan, open on one side, surrounding a 
quad. 

And then, with April, War! Up to the last week of March 
many scarce believed that the threat would become actuality. 
But when it did come, the country made innumerable quick 
decisions; one of which was that war was the order of the day, 
and projects of peace must give place. Which meant, among 
larger matters, that Leyton Center would not be begun that 
spring, nor, indeed, until a time, then in the unguessed future, 
“after the war.” 

The war itself, for most of those directly concerned, took off 
the edge of disappointment. Their minds turned to this new, 
this unbelievable, this romantic American adventure. From 
the start, most American youth thought they saw the war’s 
purpose single and clear. Not without result had they been ex¬ 
posed for two years to the steady pressure of high-powered 


246 


SHODDY 


propaganda. Belgium was a martyr; France, a passionate de¬ 
fender of la Patrie’s sacred soil and still more sacred honor; 
England, the chivalrous neighbor, unwilling to stand by and 
see a friend’s house harried by a braggart and a bully 

There was only one militarism in the world, and, because 
without our help it could not be crushed, the United States 
was being called by its leaders into the last of all wars,—the 
war which would end war by making the world safe for 
democracy. 

It was a fair and moving illusion; and to it the whole coun¬ 
try gave such allegiance and support as America had given to 
no previous war. Those who could not fight could work; those 
who disliked either occupation could become protectors of the 
country’s patriotism. Each picked up the current tag of Eng¬ 
lish slang, and in his own way set about “doing his bit.” 

Now, Peter was not happy about the war. He would not 
admit, even to himself, that the blood of his German father 
accounted for more in him than did his inheritance from his 
Yankee mother. Like most preachers of his age, this was the 
first time he had been forced to think strongly about war. 
The Spanish War was a twenty-year-old memory, though even 
in those old days he had been amazed by the swiftness with 
which this easy-going nation could be led through the suc¬ 
cessive stages of an artificial crisis into a mood which called 
for blood. 

The chief result of his doubt and questioning was to drive 
him the harder to his work. Though he did not offer for such 
obviously patriotic services as attracted many of the ministers 
of his acquaintance, the plethora of volunteers saved him from 
all but a few embarrassing invitations. 

When once he realized that the building of the Center 
must be indefinitely postponed, he went over to Archerville to 
talk things over with Mr. Leyton. 

“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “Next fall we are likely 
to be more crowded than ever. Of course, many of the boys 
will be in camp, but Tech is an ideal place for the first train¬ 
ing of men now too young for service, who will be in demand, 
if the war lasts as long as some think, for junior officers. My 
guess is that the government will encourage as many of them 
to come to us as it can.” 

Mr. Leyton said, “I think you’re right. But it looks as 


SHODDY 


247 


though our hands are tied, as to the building, even if it could 
be put up inside of a year, which it can’t.” 

“There would be only one way out that I can see,” said 
Peter, “and that is barred to us, as things now stand. It 
would take money, even it could get around all the other ob¬ 
stacles. If nothing but money were in the way, it is so im¬ 
portant that I’d almost suggest that you take a small amount 
from the sum you intend to put into the Center, and use it as 
an emergency fund for a temporary building that could be 
put up in a month.” 

“How much do you think would be needed?” 

“Oh, perhaps ten or twelve thousand dollars. I hate to think 
of it at all, in a way, for I’m going to be jealous of every dollar 
that the Center might have had which is spent for anything 
else.” 

“If that’s all, my friend, you need worry no more. You 
show me how such a temporary building would take care of 
the work next year, no matter how crudely, and we’ll both 
use what influence we have to get past the other difficulties. 
The money won’t come out of the Center, except indirectly; I 
reckon that fund as no longer mine, and this first outlay will 
come from the interest on it for the duration of the war.” 

Whereupon Peter sketched his plan, over which the two 
talked far into the night. With the money in hand, the build¬ 
ing might possibly get priority, as in some sort a war job. 

Peter came back to Great Meadows and set himself, with 
ultimately complete success, to get the permissions he needed. 

xiv 

Bishop Bonafede had seen, well ahead of most Americans, 
that the United States must get into the war. The country had 
rapidly rid itself of the neutrality and peace which had made 
Woodrow Wilson his own successor in the recent election. And 
Bonafede was fully prepared for the about-face in public senti¬ 
ment wffiich he felt must come. When it did come, he lost 
no time in unlimbering all his homiletic and hortatory guns. 

He could not ask for—nor desire—any but a speaking part. 
So he made sure that he would have a war oration ready for 
immediate use when war was actually declared, and speakers 
were in strong demand. Much usable material had come to 




248 SHODDY 

his desk; he was an assiduous reader of the English periodicals,, 
whose shocked denunciations of German frightfulness persisted 
long after the allies paid the Germans the compliment of a 
whole-hearted imitation. 

Few orators of that time care to remember what they said; 
it was much of a muchness, but Bishop Bonafede is entitled 
to such honor as belongs to a pioneer in that form of passion¬ 
ate propaganda. 

Into the speech, by way of illustration, he put a rich col¬ 
lection of atrocities, told in ghastly detail, as recounted by 
“eye-witnesses.” He held the Kaiser up as a boastful military 
mountebank, and with fine scorn of logic showed how terrible 
was his threat against civilization. He glorified all the Allied 
powers, from Britain to China; not forgetting “brave, suffer¬ 
ing, little Belgium,” “the spirit of Lafayette,” and “the sons 
of Garibaldi.” Fie paid his respects to the German-born in 
America; more than hinting that few among them w 7 ere suffi¬ 
ciently Americanized so that their loyalty could be taken for 
granted. He warned against spies, and recounted some of the 
more colorful stories of their successful and unsuccessful ex¬ 
ploits in slowing up America’s contribution to the war. 

The speech abounded in the current phrases of war-propa¬ 
ganda,—“the plot of an entire nation,” “Germany the ravisher 
of civilization,” “baby-killers,” and all the rest. It was of its 
kind a masterpiece, and was so acclaimed; other preachers 
may have had a wider hearing, but in the circles in which he 
moved Bishop Bonafede’s war speech was accounted the utter¬ 
ance of a patriotic and pious soul. 

His engagements multiplied, and of course the speech, in 
its several variant forms, made good newspaper copy. Often 
he was quoted at length, for the public he served, having had 
its taste of a hate justified by Scripture and sanctified by 
God’s ministers, was beginning to like it, hot and strong and 
often. Marcus, somewhere between Arras and Albert, could 
not be kept in ignorance of such a famous speech; two of his 
many correspondents sent him papers which contained not only 
copious extracts from the speech, but pictures of the bishop 
himself. 

Unfortunately, as Marcus viewed the incident, he was not 
alone when the first paper reached him, weeks later. To his 
great surprise, he had come out of the Vimy Ridge show not 


SHODDY 249 

only alive but unscathed, and with his outfit was in rest billets 
well back of the lines. 

The spring’s experiences, which had made him a seasoned 
veteran, had been the worst of all possible preparations for 
the contemplation of his father’s effort at winning the war by 
denunciatory eloquence. Especially since Jock Huntress got 
his eye on the American newspaper before Marcus could dis¬ 
pose of it. 

Three days after the American declaration of war, the day 
being Easter Monday, Marcus had been one of the atoms in 
a queer conglomerate of British Empire man-stuff which in 
successive waves swept up and over the rise of land called 
Vimy Ridge, which had so long been a German rampart and 
observation post. At the zero hour, five-thirty a.m., the 
heavens began to crash and the earth to open under a British 
barrage of unprecedented ferocity. Behind that storm of steel 
the advance moved slowly, fighting doggedly forward through 
a continuous horrible leprosy of the earth, scabrous with 
craters and shell holes, until by afternoon, the ancient town 
of Douai, twelve miles to the southeast, was visible in the 
clearing air. 

The Ridge had its ready-made caves, deeper than dug-outs, 
in which, so tradition says, the Huguenots took shelter, long 
ago. When Marcus and his pal, Jock Huntress, a thick- 
knuckled Canadian Scot from the Kootenay country, acting 
as “moppers-up,” found themselves at the mouth of one of 
these caves, the signs of recent occupation seemed too many 
to be ignored. The place was worth a smoke bomb, at any 
rate; but the two were as much surprised as the men they 
had trapped when a score of Germans came coughing and 
sputtering up from the gloom of the cave. 

For that both he and Huntress were decorated, somewhat 
to their disgust. In 1917 the British soldier was less impressed 
by decorations than he had been in the earlier war days; he 
had seen so many conferred in blank ignorance, and many 
more bestowed as kisses are, by favor. Marcus and Jock told 
each other that what they had done was neither heroic nor 
important, in which opinion they had the support of their 
frank and discerning comrades. By June it was ancient his¬ 
tory, but Marcus could still blush helplessly when someone 


250 


SHODDY 


would ask, quite casually, “I say, Bonafede, let’s have a look 
at your good conduct badge.” 

Jock Huntress was the one man of his outfit who should 
not have seen that newspaper from home. Because Marcus 
had turned first to his letters, the paper lay unprotected long 
enough for Jock to glance over it and to grasp its significance 
for his fellow-hero. 

“Shame on ye, Bonafede,” he said, “that ye ne’er tell’t me 
yer auld man was a Methodist Peter the Hermit. Here’s the 
finest worrd picture o’ the Hun a body could desire, painted 
by yer ain father, an’ him a bishop o’ the kirk. It’s grand 
propaganda, to ma thinkin’. Listen at this bit; ‘Conscience¬ 
less ogre o’ German militarism.’ An’ this; ‘stern judgments 
from an avengin’ God.’ An’ here’s a fine trifle aboot yersel’, 
Marcus me lad;—‘we send them on their holy mission morally 
equipped and approved by the church.’ Man, the Pope him- 
sel’ couldna bestow a properer blessin’ nor that! If on’y we’d 
had it afore we went across Vimy we shouldna’ ha’ stopped 
this side o’ Mons.” 

By a combination of muscle and diplomacy Marcus rescued 
the paper; not that he wanted it, but still less did he care to 
hear Jock read further extracts. And Jock, to do him justice, 
was not the man to carry a jest too far; he knew Bonafede 
for what he was, and, like most men at the front, could make 
allowances for the foolishness of those civilians who, at safe 
distances from the war, thought to improve on the imprecatory 
Psalms. 

When Marcus sat down to a letter, his first hot anger had 
cooled somewhat. But even so his father wondered, and would 
have wondered more if he could have read between the lines. 
Marcus wrote as much as he dared;—it was all he could hope 
to get past the censor—“I wish you would not make that 
speech again. I saw parts of it in some papers somebody sent 
me, and I greatly doubt its value. The chances are you will 
have to revise it, and the less you use it now the less unpleas¬ 
ant it will be after a while to admit that you have been mis¬ 
informed.” Even that much would not have got through if 
the officer who read and passed it had seen the speech itself. 
For, while at the front they knew much, it was not counted 
good for morale to let the people at home share their knowl¬ 
edge. The war must go on, and the men engaged on the job 


SHODDY 


251 


would see that it did; only it was no use to tell the home 
folks that the really competent soldiers had no particular hate 
for the enemy, seeing that he was doing only what they were 
doing, and in the same spirit. 

All this was hidden from Bartelmy Bonafede, and his son’s 
letter merely mystified him. He could not know that the war 
front was a different world, with its own scale of values. He 
could not even guess that the complacent national egoism 
which his speech reflected grew out of a combination of igno¬ 
rance and remoteness from the actual struggle. More discern¬ 
ing men than he missed the fact that the nearer you got to 
the front the less men hated, and the less they cared for the 
thing which the orators called glory. 

xv 

Midway of the fall, the first building of the Center had 
been ready for the Oxford Fellowship. Obviously it belonged 
to its era, those crowded months when hastily-thrown-up build¬ 
ings broke out over the American landscape, huge cubical wens 
of pine, clean and resinous from the sawmill. 

To get it at all, in a time of embargoes and commandeered 
industries, had taken both contriving and diplomacy; but with 
the Leyton gift in hand, the Fellowship was now something 
other than a mere suppliant for the crumbs that fell from the 
Methodist table. Besides, with the great influx of students 
coming to enroll in the S. A. T. C., the college and army 
authorities were pathetically glad to encourage any enterprise 
that offered sensible and supervised relaxation for a consider¬ 
able number of students. 

Mr. Leyton turned over, as he had proposed, something more 
than a year’s interest on what he intended to be his major 
gift, and by early October Peter had a crude and unlovely but 
eminently usable “hut.” Its lines and floor plan were those 
of a thousand Y. M. C. A. and other huts built all over the 
world during those feverish times, in American camps from 
Massachusetts to Texas and Puget Sound, on the Strand in 
London, and everywhere back of the Western Front, from 
Brest and St. Nazaire to Gievres and Neufchateau. 

From the beginning there was more work than anybody 
expected. Rhoda worked every minute she could take from 
classes and study, Peter put in from ten to twenty hours a 


252 


SHODDY 


day, as needed, with the assistance of a group of volunteer 
helpers who came and went in two hour shifts. With one day’s 
practice, the newest assistant, if at all fit for the job, behaved 
like a veteran. His or her duties were simple, and quickly 
learned; the main thing was to deal as a human being with 
a mob of youth suddenly thrust into a world of new freedoms 
as well as new disciplines. 

In the slackest hour of a Monday morning Peter sat behind 
a counter of the hut, and watched Rhoda overseeing the po¬ 
licing of the place. At her behest, half a dozen students 
scrubbed, washed windows, or carried away Sunday’s litter of 
newspapers, cracker cartons, pop bottles and miscellaneous 
rubbish. 

He caught her eye, and beckoned her to him. 

4 ‘Well, daughter, I’ll admit you don’t look so very tired 
after yesterday; but I’m afraid you’re drawing pretty heavily 
on your strength.” 

“Of course I am,” said Rhoda, “who isn’t? But it’s great. 
What’s our strength for, now, if not to do anything that needs 
doing? There’s a war on, you know.” 

Peter knew. Some of his knowledge was bitter to the taste, 
but he knew. “I’ve been thinking of that. Have you any news 
from Marcus lately?” 

“Yes; Saturday. I’ve been too busy to show it to you. He’s 
all right to date, and I’ve a notion he’s been in some hot fights, 
too. You know he was at the storming of Vimy Ridge last 
spring, and his outfit seems to have been busy most of the 
time since. He writes a great letter. I’ll get it for you when 
this cleaning job’s done.” 

“No hurry,” said Peter. “How about it, Rhoda; does he 
write a great love letter, too? Forgive me if I’m a nuisance.” 

“You are a nuisance, Daddy Peter; always will be. But 
I’ll tell you, since I know you’re eaten up with curiosity. If 
Marcus writes love letters, he doesn’t write ’em to me; for 
which I’m truly thankful.” 

“Meaning you don’t want love letters from him?” 

“Not from him, nor from anybody. I’ve no time for love 
letters just now. I’m enjoying something I like better.” 

“You mean all this war excitement and work?” 

“Yes; that’s part of it. But Daddy, don’t you see? It’s 
the Fellowship. It’s this darling ugly hut of ours, and what 


SHODDY 


253 


we’re doing with it. It’s the Leyton Center we’re going to have 
after the war. It’s—oh, Daddy, it’s the first time I’ve really 
felt I was coming somewhere near what Mother meant when 
I was born—and she—died; that I should be working with 
you as she had dreamt of working.” 

Peter glowed as he looked into Rhoda’s eyes. Effie, dead 
these twenty years, seemed to be looking back at him out of 
her daughter’s brown, healthy face. Then a swift wave of 
futile rebellion swept over him. What a partner Effie would 
have been! But here was her child, not merely alive but giving 
out vitality with every word and movement. The other work¬ 
ers, older as well as younger, depended on her as much as they 
did on him. Without her, the place would have been horribly 
drab and ordinary. 

“And is this what you really want? Just to be my ‘col¬ 
league’?” 

“I don’t want anything else, yet. Some day there’ll be an 
end to it, so far as I’m concerned; when it’s going good, and 
you’ll need the sort of help I can’t give. Then I hope I can 
find something else; maybe a man, if the right man turns up. 
But, Daddy, if only I could shut my eyes to the knowledge 
that all we are doing is getting our boys ready for war, I’d 
be the happiest girl in town. And I can’t help it that there’s 
a war. So I’m happy anyhow. And here I stick. I’ll get my 
degree, all in good time, and you are sure to need me for a 
while after the war is over, and the Center is being built. 
The girls will want somebody of their own age and size to 
help them fit into Leyton, with all it ought to mean to them. 
I’m applying for that job right now.” 

“Your application is hereby approved, young woman. But 
you’re quite sure about Marcus?” 

“Don’t you worry about Marcus, Daddy. He loves me, and 
I love him; that’s an old story—the man I could love better 
or differently isn’t in sight. But we’re the sort of lovers you 
and Bishop Eberle are, if I may presume to compare small 
people with great.” 

Peter pulled her ear, and then kissed it. “Your mother 
would have been proud of you,” he said. “And I’m so proud 
it almost chokes me.” 

To hide the swift tears she had dropped her head on his 
coat. In a moment she said, “Daddy, dear, isn’t it lovely?” 


CHAPTER VIII 


I 

The Boulogne-Folkestone boat had its usual mixed and 
various-minded company. The Channel was its normal 
troubled self, and even the pudgy General who sat in the lee 
of the deckhouse could not look military, either in his period¬ 
ical hurried trips to the rail or in the intervals between his 
acuter agonies. Civilians similarly preoccupied did not notice 
his lack of smartness, but it did not escape the quite impersonal 
attention of a half dozen Tommies lounging in the passage 
way under the bridge, themselves mysteriously immune from 
seasickness. 

They had seven days leave, and the day itself was December 
18, in the third year of the war. One of the privates com¬ 
mented on that sinister conjunction of the calendar and their 
week of freedom. 

“We’re goin’ to Blighty, reight enough,” he said, “but Ah’m 
ommost as sick as t’ general theer when Ah remember Ah’ve 
got to start back early o’ Christmas Eve, or get wot for when 
Ah do report. It’s a fair mess, that’s wot it is. Wheer Ah 
come fro’, Christmas Eve’s summat to think on; an’ Ah’ll be 
gettin’ on t’ train to London juist as t’ fun gets started. Ah’ve 
nivver greeted yet, i’ all this war muck, but Ah’ll greet then, 
if Ah dunnot sweer. An’ sweerin’s aht o’t question; mi moth¬ 
er’ll be too near. Soa Ah’ll greet an’ all, an’ soa wod onny lad 
i’ my place. Dooant yo’ think so, mate?” 

He nudged his neighbor. They were total strangers, which 
did not matter. The other laughed a little dryly. “I’m sorry, 
but I don’t know. I think I get you, but you’re from the North 
somewhere, and I’m a little slow to pick up your North-country 
speech. What do you mean by ‘greet’?” 

“ ’Course Ah’m fro’ t’ North. Yorksher; West Ridin’. 
Mean by ‘greet’? Why, greet. Cry. Blubber. Rooar. Like 
wheer it says i’t Bible, ‘weepin’ an’ gnashin’ o’ teeth.’ Yo’ 
Canadians ’ave a lot to learn.” 


254 


SHODDY 


255 


Marcus admitted it. “Though I’m not Canadian myself. I 
went over to Canada from the States to join up. And, now I 
know what ‘greet’ means, I think you’re right. I should greet 
too, if I had to say goodbye to my people on Christmas Eve. 
But, even so, you’re better off than I am. I’ve nobody on this 
side to greet for, or with.” 

A third soldier of the group broke in. “I say, that’s rotten 
luck. It oughtn’t to be allowed. Where are you going for your 
leave, if you don’t mind my askin’?” 

“Oh, not at all. But honestly I don’t exactly know. I haven’t 
seen much of England yet. And all Americans want to see 
London. So I suppose it will be London first. Maybe a day 
at Oxford. Stratford, of course. I’ll get along. I shan’t give 
myself time to be lonesome.” 

“But, I say, that’s not good enough. Joe here may greet, 
but he’ll have a human welcome first. And so shall I. Why not 
you? Look here, I’ll make you a sporting offer. You don’t 
know me, and I don’t know you. Risk the same on either 
side, not? What’s your name?” 

Marcus told him. 

“Fancy! That’s one of our familiar names in Yorkshire, 
isn’t it Joe?” 

“Ah,” said Joe. “Theer’s plenty o’ Bonafedes. One on ahr 
street, I mind.” 

“That’s interesting,” Marcus said. “My father came from 
Yorkshire; went to the states when he was a boy, from a 
place called Thornlea.” 

“Thornlea!” The two, genuinely surprised, spoke as one. 
And Joe added, “Eh, lad, that’s wheer we come fro’! Why, 
tha must be Thornlea thisen!” 

And the other confirmed it. “Joe and I are both Thornlea 
boys. You must be one of the Thornlea Bonafedes, in spite 
of your American tongue. And that only makes my proposal 
so much the easier. London’s a washout this time of year, with 
a war on. Lots of soldiers about, of course; and Piccadilly 
Circus and the Euston Road are full of girls looking for 
colonials with more money to spend than we Tommies have. 
You come on down with me to Thornlea. I doubt if you will 
find any of your ancestral halls, but you’ll be sure of a fairly 
lively time at our house. The heir of the Jessops invites you!” 
And he bowed low, with a grin on his face the while. 


256 


SHODDY 


Marcus demurred, vigorously. “The Thornlea Bonafedes 
are nothing to me,” he said; “nor I to them; and they as well 
as your people have better things to do than taking in a 
chance-met soldier. It wouldn’t be, as you say, cricket, for me 
to think of it. I’ve no claim on anybody in England.” 

“No? Not cricket?” queried young Jessop. “You’re fighting 
for England, when you’d no call to do it. America has come 
in, but you didn’t wait. That’s enough to open to you any 
door in England. And, more than ever, I hope you’ll come.” 

“It’s not a bad nooation o’ Willy’s” commented Joe. “Ther’ll 
be rare gooin’s on at Norfolk Lodge, wi’ Willy back on leeave, 
an’ they knaw ha’ to mak’ fowk welcome; they do that.” 

Before the boat came into the quiet waters of Folkestone 
Harbor Marcus’s scruples had been overruled. For he liked 
this young Jessop. The boy ought to have been an officer, 
and would be, before long; there were reasons, he said, why 
he had gone into the ranks at first. 

Once the arrangement for Thornlea had been made, Willy 
Jessop would brook no tarrying. “We may taxi about London 
a bit, if there’s time,” he said, “and I’ll show you as much as 
you can see from the cab window. But we move North today.” 

At Charing Cross, Willy sought first for a time table. After 
a brief search he announced, “There’s a train for Leeds at 
three. That will put us in by eight-thirty, and Thornlea is 
only half an hour away.” 

They fed, and then Willy said, “Now for a ride. We can 
do a lot by three. Keep your eye out, Bonafede, for the glory 
that is London. The place is a bit run down just now, due to 
the town’s handy men being absent temporarily, on urgent busi¬ 
ness in Flanders and Picardy.” 

The taxi driver was one of the old guard. Not so long ago 
he had cruised up and down the Strand at the back of a 
hansom. Said Willy, who recognized the type, “You know 
London pretty well, driver, I fancy.” 

“Like the back o’ me ’and, that’s all,” the modest driver 
said, and heard with an approving grin Willy’s detailed direc¬ 
tions. 

“I want my friend to see all we can do in the time we 
have; but don’t be in a hurry. Pay by the hour, you know. 
First, then, a look at Trafalgar Square when you turn into 
Whitehall, then past the Horse Guards, and Downing Street, 


SHODDY 


257 


to the Houses of Parliament and Westminster. Then along 
Victoria Street and around Buckingham Palace, skirting the 
Green Park to Hyde Park Corner and along Piccadilly. Down 
the Haymarket to Trafalgar Square again. Then the Strand to 
Fleet Street, Ludgate Hill, St. Paul’s, the Mansion House and 
the Bank. That’s as far in that direction as we’ll have time 
for. Come back by Cheapside to Holborn and Oxford Street, 
turn up by the British Museum, out to the Euston Road and 
so the station.” 

Marcus heard with unconcealed pleasure the familiar names 
of his boyhood reading, and the driver said, “That’s a good- 
ish drive, sir, but if the traffic’s not too heavy we can make 
it. Pertickler for men on leave. ’Ad a boy of me own at First 
Wipers. Got the king’s letter on his photo at ’ome.” 

Willy said, “Ah, yes; you’ve done your bit, too. I had a 
brother in that show. Well, we’re not getting on with the war 
job very fast, but we’ve got to see it through.” 

“ ’An’ will,” said the driver, as he and Willy shook hands, 
their one concession to the bond with which Death had joined 
them. 

ii 

Darkness fell within an hour after the train slipped out of 
St. Pancras. Joe Bellamy had enjoyed his two hours’ nap in 
the station, and promptly showed that he could do with more. 
In the front line, sleep is a sketchy and irregular privilege. 

The other two talked; mainly of life as they had known it 
at school. Willy Jessop, after a little sketch of his education, 
thus far, was keen to hear about the technical schools of the 
States, being rather on the technical side himself. What Mar¬ 
cus told him of Tech suggested something on the order of 
the University of Leeds and Sheffield University; and, in a 
smaller way, his own college of Bradford, where one could get 
a sound scientific education, with as much of “the other stuff” 
as one cared to take. But shortly he began to deduce from 
something Marcus let fall that the Tech at Great Meadows 
was on a scale of its own. 

“How many students did you say were in residence?” 

“Oh, I suppose six or eight thousand.” 

“You suppose! How on earth are they housed? You can’t 
have hostels for so many.” 


258 


SHODDY 


Marcus gathered that “hostels” might mean dormitories. 
“Many students live in private houses,” he said. “They rent 
rooms, and eat wherever they please. Many are in fraternity 
houses—sort of clubs, you know;” and he tried to explain 
the Greek letter societies. After that Willy made him tell 
about football, and the laboratories, and the general equipment 
of Tech. He even told of the Oxford Fellowship. By its name 
it should have some interest for an Englishman. 

But Willy showed little concern about it. He was thinking 
of the size of things educational at such an institution as Tech. 

“Ah, well, you’ve got the money. We haven’t. And we shall 
be poorer than ever when this job over in France is finished. 
But if you’ll go over to Bradford with me I’ll show you as neat 
a laboratory”—he came down hard on the bor —“for dyes and 
all that, as you could find even in Germany. We’re learning 
from our friend the enemy; a little late in the day, some of 
us youngsters think. But that’s English, too.” 

Marcus, not knowing that Willy had wired on to Thornlea, 
was unprepared for the reception that awaited the three mud- 
smeared heroes at Thornlea station. Joe Bellamy faced a 
welcoming committee of his own, into whose embraces he 
vanished, unheeded of the other two. Marcus found himself 
shaking hands with total strangers; two girls who had descend¬ 
ed in force on Willy and then had released him to a stout 
gentleman in gray. “Here, dad,” said one, “take the blighter.” 

And then they took possession of Marcus. “You’re a Thorn¬ 
lea boy, we hear,” said the other girl; “though you’ve not quite 
got the look. But please be resigned. You’re one of us for 
a week—nearly.” She choked a little over the “nearly.” Re¬ 
covering, she went on, “Willy wired us your name;—Marcus. 
It’s not so bad. Well, Marcus, I’m Jeanette—Jane to my 
friends—Depledge—and this is Judith Jessop, sister to your 
comrade in arms. The only way you can tell us apart is that 
she’s J. J., and I’m J. D.” 

Which was a pleasantry, for Judith, rosy with the happy 
excitement of the moment, seemed to Marcus just what he 
had thought the perfect English girl must be—tall, slender, 
glowingly white and pink and golden, and, naturally, blue of 
eye. Jane was of Norman blood, if Norman blood is dark, 
and if blood does tell. She seemed a trifle more generously pro¬ 
portioned than her friend. 


SHODDY 


259 


And so up the stairs and over the railway bridge into Thorn- 
lea. A taxi in waiting, its dim lights scarcely visible in the 
unrelieved darkness of the street, took them a good fifteen 
minutes of slow driving through gloom which Marcus could 
not think concealed a town. “How dark it is!” he said. 

“There’s a war on,” observed Jane. “We’ve had the Zepps 
even up as far North as this. But our driver knows the way.” 

The car turned through a gate, and up a long winding 
driveway. Then one felt a few stone steps, and a door. Once 
inside, and the outer door shut, some one parted the hangings, 
and Marcus felt, as quickly as saw, the warm brightness of a 
Yorkshire drawing room with no nonsense about it. Yorkshire 
is not given to period furniture. 

“Welcome to Norfolk Lodge,” said Willy, in the lead, just 
before a woman with silvering hair took him into her arms. 
. “That’s right,” said Mr. Jessop, “but suppose you girls let 
go of Mr. Bonafede, so that we may show Mother her guest.” 
Willy, emerging from his mother’s embrace, turned to rebuke 
them. “Is that the way to treat a Transatlantic cousin?” he 
asked. “For shame. He’s too young and friendless to be 
taken prisoner. Mother, dear, this is Marcus of the Bona- 
fedes. I hope it’s the branch of that family with which you 
are on visiting terms.” 

Mrs. Jessop gave Marcus her hand. “Never mind this 
scamp,” she said. “He’s trying to hide his feelings. I know 
him. Ten years ago he would have cried. Now he makes 
everything into a jest. That’s better, of course, but some¬ 
times it calls for explanation. You are very welcome.” And 
Marcus, looking into her eyes, knew that he was. 

Mrs. Jessop had given one son to her country, as Willy had 
told on the way down. Howard had been in a roadside trench 
in the Ypres salient when, with a huge uprush of mud, chalk, 
wire, war-debris, human, animal and road-metal, it had become 
in an instant a mine crater, forty feet across. The boy’s body 
had never been found. 

Marcus was puzzled. He could guess, in the tenderness with 
which the mother had embraced her son, as well as in the 
careful gaiety of the girls and in the shadow on the father’s 
face, that they were thinking of Howard, the firstborn. His 
picture stood on the mantel, differing little in the main from 
tens of thousands of such pictures which stood on other Eng- 


260 


SHODDY 


lish mantels. But nobody spoke of him. Nobody spoke of 
the war, except incidentally. 

Mrs. Jessop touched the edge of it when she said, “The 
first thing you boys need is to get out of those dreadful 
clothes. What mud! It fair smells! Off with you to the 
bathroom. You have half an hour before supper, and you 
will need all of it. Put your dirty things in the hamper, and 
shut the lid. The clean things are all laid out for you. Mr. 
Bonafede—or will you let me call you Marcus? You’ll find 
some clothes that I think will fit you fairly well. The geyser’s 
lit, and there’s plenty of hot water, so I shall expect both 
of you to come down without a sign of French soil on you. 
We want no war mud for supper.” 

When they came down, after prolonged operations in the 
bathroom, and a briefer interval for dressing, Marcus felt 
queerly like a stranger to himself. He was wearing a dinner 
suit that had been Howard’s, and yet it fitted him as well 
as his own at home, new last fall. 

Freed of khaki and khaki-and-mud, the family was really 
seeing him for the first time, and, so far as anybody reported 
on it, he passed the inspection well enough. 

“I can see he’s English, now,” said Jane; and Marcus, 
much to his disgust, felt the hot blood rise in his cheeks. 
“Doesn’t he blush beautifully?” 

“Jane! How can you” Judith protested; but it was a mild 
rebuke. That blush was worth seeing. 

The supper—such a supper as never an English home of 
those years could serve save when its soldier sons came home 
on leave—at last was done, and around the fire in the library 
there was chance to talk. Mr. Jessop lit his pipe, and Willy, 
to everybody’s surprise, declined the cigarettes. “I like ’em,” 
he said, “but Marcus, I find, is not ready for ’em yet. Too 
young. Go on with the other conversation.” 

“How old would your father be when he left Thornlea?” 
Mr. Jessop asked Marcus. He had a British interest in family. 

“So far as I can judge, though I am not very well up on 
the story, he must have been no more than fifteen. Just a 
boy.” 

“And now he’s—?” 

“Forty-six or seven,” Marcus supplied the figure. 

“Don’t think I’m merely inquisitive. I’m trying to fit him 


SHODDY 


261 


into our Thornlea. He would have left about ’81, then. Sure¬ 
ly I should remember the family. I’m a little older than he. 
Do you know what was his mother’s maiden name?” 

“Yes; it was Oldroyd.” 

“Ah, yes; that would be it. Well, then, I did know the 
family. I knew your grandmother a little, by seeing her at 
the old house, though I must have been off at school when 
the family went to America. But I knew your maternal great¬ 
grandfather very well indeed. He died while I was out in 
South Africa—the Boer war, you know. He was Jonas Old¬ 
royd, and one of Thornlea’s characters. He did not share much 
in the prosperity which came to some of his generation, my 
own father among them; but he had qualities, had Jonas; he 
had qualities. I wonder if you know that Thornlea is a great 
shoddy center, has been so for at least seventy-five years? 
We came up from shoddy ourselves; it’s nothing to be ashamed 
of in Thornlea. Good honest shoddy has its place. But old 
Jonas would have naught to do with it. He had a small mill, 
even for those times, but you should have seen the cloth it 
turned out. My father would not wear any other Thornlea 
. cloth, least of all his own. I must have worn a lot of it myself 
when I was a boy.” 

“I’ve never heard father say much about his grandfather, 
or about his father, either,” Marcus said. “You see, he went 
west from New York when he was only about seventeen or 
eighteen, and it is easy to lose track.” He was queerly feeling 
that he ought to be apologetic in behalf of his father. 

“That’s right,” said Mr. Jessop. “Much slips out of the 
mind, amidst new scenes and new interests. But the old gen¬ 
tleman was worth knowing. We are not as good Wesleyans 
in these days as we ought to be, but I remember him as one 
of the pillars of Brunswick Chapel. My mother often took 
me to class meeting, and I can still hear your great-grand¬ 
father’s testimony—it was always put into the same words; 
T thank God for an open Bible and a free Gospel’ he would 
say. Not a bad thing to keep saying, or thinking, either.” 

“We haven’t altogether broken away from his religious 
ways,” said Marcus; “we’re still Methodists.” He could not 
quite bring himself, yet, to say, “My father is a bishop of 
that church in America.” 

“As I wish more were,” said Mr. Jessop. “The world has 


262 


SHODDY 


never realized its debt to the Wesleys. This part of Yorkshire 
is full of Methodist memories. I suppose your grandparents are 
not living?” 

“No, sir. Grandfather Bonafede died in America, and 
Grandmother came back to Thornlea, or somewhere near. But 
I think she must have died ten or twelve years ago. Father 
told me she made her home with two of her distant cousins; 
he saw that she was comfortably cared for, so far as he could.” 

Mrs. Jessop spoke up, “My dear, I believe I knew her. Do 
you know the name of her cousins?” 

Marcus was at a loss. Why hadn’t he paid more attention 
to his family tree? And why hadn’t his father told him more 
about it? “The name was not Oldroyd, I know, or anything 
like it.” Then, as he cast about for some clue, he recalled that 
his father had once spoken a name that at the time struck him 
as peculiarly English, though he did not know why. “Are there 
people in this part of the country with a name that ends in 
‘thwait’, or something like it?” 

“Of course,” said Mrs. Jessop. “It’s the same family. I 
was just thinking of them. The name is Braithwaite. You 
knew of them, Samuel, I’m sure. Those old ladies who lived 
far over in Upper Thornlea, on the way to Bewley Bridge. 
And if Mr. Jessop can remember Mr. Oldroyd, I can come 
nearer, for I have often talked with Mrs. Bonafede, your 
grandmother. When Mr. Jessop was in South Africa, I had 
plenty to do, with my young family, but I ran away from them 
sometimes for long walks, and one of my favorites was around 
the old church in Upper Thornlea. Many a time I stopped 
to rest at the Braithwaite cottage. She was a keen old lady, 
Mrs. Bonafede was, and so proud of her son in America, and 
of his advancement in the church. That would be your father, 
wouldn’t it? Though you haven’t said he’s a minister.” 

“Yes; he’s been in the Methodist ministry over twenty 
years.” 

“Your grandmother called him ‘Bart,’ I remember.” 

“That’s dad,” said Marcus. “Bartelmy Bonafede.” 

“No wonder Willy invited him here,” said Jane to no one 
in particular. “Bright boy, Willy, at intervals. He just knew 
that Marcus belonged to us.” 

Willy mussed her hair. But Judith said, “Well, if he doesn’t 
exactly belong to us, isn’t it nice to find that some of his 


SHODDY 


263 


people and ours have been friends?” Whereupon she blushed 
more hotly than Marcus had done, and Marcus wondered how 
her blushes could be so lovely when his were so shameful. 

If Bishop Bartelmy Bonafede could have looked at the 
outside of Norfolk Lodge as Marcus saw the place the next 
morning, he would have thought that it had changed very 
little since the dreary day, long ago, when a grubby little boy 
had come up the hill and had gone down again, thinking 
strange and bitter thoughts about those who dwelt in Lodges. 

To Marcus, with no suspicion that the place meant anything 
to any Bonafede in the world save himself, it seemed just a 
good, substantial English house, standing in its own grounds, 
and affording a fine view of the Thornlea valley, with its cap¬ 
tivating alternation of clustered houses and small mills and 
stretches of farm land, much of the pasture still green in the 
mild December sun. 


hi 

The days flew by, with Bartelmy Bonafede’s son giving him¬ 
self up to the generous and gracious hospitality of the place. 

The young people begrudged every minute unoccupied; sleep 
could come later, but the present had more important claims. 
Every night there was a party somewhere; every morning, 
excursions along the crest of the hill to the old ruins, or down 
by the river, whose banks still retained some of their ancient 
loveliness, in spite of the polluting waters which the mills 
emptied into the stream. If there was rain, a billiard room 
and a music room offered entertainment. And some sort of 
company always coming and going. 

No one could say either that the thing was planned, or 
consciously sought, but day by day it was easier to pair off 
Marcus and Judith together, until at length the arrangement 
was taken for granted. Nobody had time to ask or think what 
it meant, or what might come of it; though Mrs. Jessop took 
to following them with her eyes, as she saw them in the garden 
or hurrying down the drive, or dropping innocently into the 
back seat of the Jessop motor. 

Certainly these two did not stop to take their feelings apart. 
As most young things of that day must, they were living in 
the moment; and, for the moment, they were radiantly happy. 


264 


SHODDY 


What else but today mattered, when you could for a little 
forget the big guns thundering in France, and the long casual¬ 
ty lists coming out in every paper? 

The day before Christmas Eve! By a fiction to which all 
gave assent, it was Christmas Eve. Leave was up in the morn¬ 
ing, so the calendar was advanced a day—for one last fling! 

The young people had planned a masquerade. The elders 
said, “But what about Christmas Eve, and the carols, and the 
tree?” 

They negotiated a compromise. First the masquerade, from 
dinner until near midnight. Then the carols, to “sing Christmas 
in;” then the tree, the presents, the Christmas greetings,—and 
as few hours for sleep as might be. 

An expedition to the great attic was organized. Costumes 
being in demand for the party, the stores of two generations 
must be made to yield their treasures, Mrs. Jessop surrender¬ 
ing at discretion. And what treasures they were! In these 
trunks and boxes the pageant of English fashions since crino¬ 
line needed only to be set in order; every vogue had its au¬ 
thentic examples. All this for the women, of course, the men 
found less plunder available for their use. 

Judith and Marcus, leaving the riflers of trunks at their 
hilarious task, strayed about under the rafters, Judith explain¬ 
ing this and that of the family’s relics. 

“Here’s the table-chair daddy had when he was a baby; 
it has served for the boys, and last of all it was mine. This 
is the family cradle, with the same history. Daddy says it 
was his father’s, too, but that’s going pretty far back.” 

The tall secretary which stood behind the cradle looked as 
though its glass doors had been closed but yesterday; all its 
books and shelves were in order. “This was Grandfather Jes- 
sop’s,” said Judith, as she lifted the cover. “He never would 
have any other. You know, he was the founder of the family; 
that is, here in Thornlea. He came from Leeds as a boy, to 
work in the mills, and became a mill-owner himself. I re¬ 
member him a little, though he died when I was seven, and I 
loved him. But daddy says he was a hard man to get along 
with, especially when he was building up his business. Perhaps 
he had to be.” 

“He seems to have been business-like,” observed Marcus, 


SHODD-Y 


265 


pointing to the pigeon-holes behind the writing-table. “If these 
papers are his, they testify to a careful man.” 

“Yes,” Judith said, “but I think that is Daddy’s doing. All 
the papers of any business value were taken out long ago. And 
Daddy has said he didn’t know why these need be kept, but 
he’s queer about destroying such things. Though they’re no 
earthly use.” 

“They might tell a story about the business life of the last 
half-century, maybe,” conjectured Marcus; “if they were put 
together by years. That would be interesting, seems to me.” 

“Yes; perhaps. Showing how business was managed before 
typewriters and adding machines and all that came into use? 
I suppose grandfather had dealings with hundreds of firms, 
big and little, all over this part of Yorkshire. Ooh! Marcus; 
I have an idea! What if he and your grandfather—I mean, 
perhaps there is something in these old files that will tell of 
those two doing business with one another! Why not? They 
were—what do you call it?—contemporaries, you know. Let’s 
look!” 

Marcus thought it might be a good idea, but not for him. 
“I wasn’t thinking of anything like that, when I said those 
papers might be interesting.” 

“Certainly not; I know that, stupid. But what’s the harm? 
They’re nothing but old papers, useless for all these years. 
I’m going to investigate.” 

“All right, Judy, look away. This is your attic, but it isn’t 
mine. I’ll take a peek at these books while you rummage. 
Books are not private.” 

He took a book from the shelf, while Judith ran her eye 
along the row, and pulled down a box whose front bore the 
letters, “Bi to By.” “Here’s the place to find the Bonafede- 
Jessop transactions if there were anyj’ she cried. “Wouldn’t it 
be priceless, to discover that those two old worthies did busi¬ 
ness together?” 

There was silence for a space at that end of the attic, broken 
only by the rustling of the papers which Judith turned over. 
Marcus was deep in Lover’s “Handy Andy,” when a cry from 
Judith called him back from .his enjoyment of Lover’s im¬ 
possible Irish blunderer. 

“Why Marcus, there isl I didn’t really expect to find any¬ 
thing, and it’s only one bit of paper. But look!*’ 


266 


SHODDY 


She handed him a single sheet folded once. “Read it.” 

Which he did, since she had unearthed it, not he. It was 
a tradesman’s bill. The type was old-fashioned, centainly, but 
the writing was beautifully clear and shapely. 

Thornlea, 1st. December, 1880 

Samuel Jessop, Esq. 

To MARK BONAFEDE, Carpenter and Joiner, Dr. 

To bill rendered, £1. 17. 6. 

A settlement would oblige. 

“Isn’t that one of your grandfather’s bills?” asked Judith. 

“It must be,” Marcus admitted. “That’s his name; I’m 
named for him, you know, though Mother thought Marcus 
sounded better than Mark, and chose that form. And he was 
a carpenter, though I don’t know about the ‘joiner’.” 

“It’s much the same thing,” said Judith. She paused. 
Then, “But there’s something queer about this, Marcus. That 
bill isn’t marked paid. It says, ‘A settlement would oblige.’ 
I wonder why your Grandfather Bonafede didn’t mark it 
paid.” 

“Maybe he did,” Marcus ventured; “on another bill.” 

“Then why was this kept?” Judith wanted to know. “I 
don’t believe grandfather ever did pay it. Look at the date. 
Didn’t your grandfather go to America in 1881? You told 
Daddy so. Why, Marcus, we owe you that money. Or your 
father.” 

“Not me,” disclaimed Marcus. “Maybe my grandfather, un¬ 
less he got his money later. Anyhow, the thing is outlawed, 
long since.” 

“What do you mean by ’outlawed’?” 

“Why, no longer collectible. With us, anyway, the law says 
that after a certain few years, a bill is dead; outlawed. Can’t 
be sued for. And that thing is thirty-five years old.” 

“What of it? I’m sure it wasn’t paid. It’s a debt. It ought 
to be paid, even now. Honest people don’t take advantage of 
such laws.” 

Straightway the tempter entered into Marcus. He delib¬ 
erately put “Handy Andy” back on the shelf. The attic was 
suddenly quiet, the rest of the rummagers having just clat¬ 
tered downstairs with their booty, one of them shouting as 


SHODDY 


267 


they went, “Come on, you laggards; we’ve got our work cut 
out, to fix these old things up.” 

But these two gave no heed. And Marcus said, “I’ll tell 
you what, Judy. If you are so insistent that the bill be paid, 
will you pay it, yourself, and to me?” 

Judith was puzzled. And just a little hurt. Why should he 
ask payment of her? Still, she had said it ought to be paid. 

“Why, ye-es, if that’s best. But—I don’t quite understand. 
Do you mean today, now? I haven’t the—” 

“Yes, Judy, I mean today. But not all of it. By instal¬ 
ments. The first payment now, on account.” And he took 
her face between his hands*. 

Her eyes widened; at least he wasn’t asking for money. 
Then came quick understanding of just what he meant. 

He kissed her, and she did not move, nor return his kiss. 
She was too busy thinking. 

“Received of Judith Jessop,” he said, slowly, “one instal¬ 
ment on account of bill rendered. With thanks, and antici¬ 
pating further valued favors.” 

“Oh,” she said, recovering a little, “so that’s your idea of 
payment, is it? And how many will be necessary to pay the 
bill in full?” 

“Judy darling,” and he put his arm about her, “so far as 
I am concerned, I’m prepared to accept instalments indefinitely, 
though I’ve got to be honest and admit that I’ve already got 
value received, with interest. But what do you say? You 
don’t know much about me. But what you don’t know is 
fairly decent, I hope. If I throw myself in, along with what¬ 
ever it was that Grandfather Bonafede was charging for, will 
you let me collect another payment on account, now and then?” 

And Judith, all smiling as to the lips and all brimming as 
to the eyes, said, “If you truly mean that, Marcus, I think— 
I think—that is, would you mind taking another payment now, 
while I happen to have it with me?” 

And thus it was that the bill* which a little hungry boy 
had carried up to Norfolk Lodge so many years ago, and had 
left there to wait the debtor’s convenience, at last began to 
be paid. If only it could have been settled in time to save 
little Bartelmy Bonafede from going to bed—and to the battle 
of life—hungry! 

As they stood there, clasped in their first embrace, up from 


268 


SHODDY 


the road came the strains of a hymn. The waits were setting 
out on their all-night round, and here, under the Jessop win¬ 
dows they were singing as only in Yorkshire can the tune which 
bears the county’s name be sung. 

“Christians, awake! Salute the happy morn 
Whereon the Saviour of this world was born.” 

IV 

It was February before any letters mentioning the Thorn- 
lea Christmas reached America. Marcus, back in the horrible 
winter trench-and-dugout life, put off writing until he could 
do it under less cramped conditions. Rest billets came short 
of the ideal, but a fellow had daylight, such as it was; and 
shelter, as far as it went. 

With variations, his story, naturally, was the world-old paean 
of the lover who knows that the fates have made special inter¬ 
position in his behalf, to bestow upon him, by what the pro¬ 
fane would consider pure accident, the dearest girl on earth. 

In this wise he wrote to Rhoda, sure that she would under¬ 
stand; as she did, though not without a quarter of an hour’s 
self-examination, to make sure that she had no lingering regret. 
She came out of her reverie quite clear on that score. Marcus 
was a dear, but she had never thought of him as a lover. 

He had written, “Please ask Uncle Peter to consider this his 
letter, too, if you are willing to share it; it’s pretty long, and 
I’ve a harder one to write before turning in.” 

He could not have told why he felt that writing to his 
mother would be more of a task. It almost seemed as though 
he must be on the defensive. Necessity constrained him- to 
make Judith desirable, not to himself, but to. his mother. So 
his rhapsodies, flowing easily enough in his letter to Rhoda, 
became more than a little forced when his mother’s letter was 
under way. Not that he consciously feared or even envisaged 
her opposition; it was just that he could not think of her as 
easily understanding what had happened. As he wrote, he 
tried without success to imagine what sort of lovers she and 
his father had been. 

The result was a rather stiff and inane epistle, which nar¬ 
rowly avoided the appearance of a veiled apology for some 


SHODDY 269 

stupid blunder. Thus it came to Viola, and thus it was ticketed 
in her mind. 

The Bonafedes had gone out to Salt Lake City for the inter¬ 
val between Christmas and Bartelmy’s two spring conferences, 
and were settled in an apartment hotel. It was understood 
that Viola would go east with her husband. That she would 
not return, at least until fall, had not been announced. But 
she was giving up the apartment, and arranging to have an¬ 
other reserved for them at some indefinite date, b.y promising 
a week’s advance notice. 

“Have you a letter from Marcus, too?” she asked Bartelmy 
at breakfast, as she looked up from her own letter. 

“Yes. “I’ve merely glanced at it, as yet. I suppose he’s 
told you the details of this love affair of his.” 

“Such as it is. He doesn’t write as if he were carried away 
with it. Of course it was one of these silly war-romances, that 
flare up in a day and die down in a week. I understand they’re 
more common in England than here, and ours are bad enough. 
Do you happen to know anything about the family? It seems 
they live in the town where you were born.” 

“So Marcus says in his letter.” It was one of the two facts 
it had disclosed which, even with his one hasty reading, were 
crystal clear. “I might have; no telling. But it’s a long time 
since we left Thornlea, and even in England things and people 
change. I do remember that Jessop was one of the names we 
often heard; there must have been several Jessops in Thorn- 
lea then.” 

“But he writes as though they were something above the 
common run. What do you think? Says their house is called 
Norfolk Lodge, and is on Abbey Ridge. Does that mean any¬ 
thing?” 

Norfolk Lodge; Jessop; Abbey Ridge? There was no men¬ 
tion of Norfolk Lodge in his letter, but now, putting house 
and family and Abbey Ridge together, they spelled something 
in his memory. But certainly it was nothing to talk about, now. 

“It may, and it may not. Most English houses of impor¬ 
tance have names; but I understand that lately all sorts of 
people have taken to putting names on all sorts of houses. As 
I remember, Abbey Ridge was as near being an aristocratic 
section as Thornlea could boast.” 

“Well, the girl is not bad locking, if this picture is any in- 


270 


SHODDY 


dication.” She passed it over to her husband. “Do you sup¬ 
pose they have any money?” 

“Very likely, living on Abbey Ridge. But in England nowa¬ 
days people with money are not wealthy, as we think of wealth. 
England is paying for the war, as much as she can, while it is 
going on. That means taxes; big taxes; far beyond anything 
Americans would stand. We’re not up against it as they are. 
I suppose the fairly well-to-do must be paying a quarter of 
their income in taxes.” 

In all this he was sparring for time. He had not been able 
to think carefully, yet, of the other important paragraph in 
Marcus’s letter. He must find out if she knew what it seemed 
to say. 

“Does he tell you how he happened to propose?” 

“Why, he raves a little about the house party they had at 
Christmas, and a masquerade. Talks of himself and the girl 
slipping away from the others; the usual stuff. You may read 
the letter if you like.” 

It was many years since they had fallen out of the way of 
reading each others’ letters, and Bartelmy was strangely un¬ 
willing to resume the habit now. 

“Oh, no; I was just wondering how the affair came to a 
head. I suppose it was just the old combination of the time, 
the place and the girl.” 

“Well, I should say, from the way he writes to me, that 
it won’t last. If it does, there’s time enough to make inquiries, 
before anybody need think about a wedding.” 

To Bartelmy’s relief, Viola evinced no curiosity about his 
letter. She had the essential facts, and she would go over them 
at her leisure. She knew well enough, by this time, that Mar¬ 
cus intended to make his own choices. In her heart she had 
deeply resented his enlisting without so much as a by your 
leave, though circumstances had forced her to overlook that. 
Nevertheless, she would approve of this, his latest folly, only 
if and when she so decided. Should she choose not to ap¬ 
prove, Marcus—and Judith—would not be kept in ignorance 
of her displeasure. 

Bartelmy had an engagement with a church official, who 
was passing through on his way to the Coast. He went to the 
station ahead of time, Marcus’s letter in his pocket. In the 


SHODDY 271 

waiting room he took it out and read it with deliberate care. 
One page he read twice. 

“And, Dad, there’s one part of this thing that seems like 
a fairy story. It belongs to you, so I’m not writing it to 
Mother. You tell her. Up there in the Jessop attic, while the 
others were digging out costumes for the party, Judith and I 
came across some old papers. She dug into them, and—what 
do you suppose? Found an old bill, dated nearly forty years 
ago, made out by your father for work he had done for her 
grandfather! It called for one pound seventeen shillings and 
sixpence. And it wasn’t marked paid. Judith said it ought to 
be paid, even at this late day, by somebody to somebody. 
And at that I got up my nerve to do a thing I had been afraid 
I’d have to go away without chancing. I said, ‘All right; then 
suppose, as Mark Bonafede’s grandson and namesake, I col¬ 
lect something on account.’ And I kissed her. Well, Dad, 
when I found she wasn’t exactly unwilling, I could have given 
the Tech yell if I had thought about it, which I didn’t. I was 
busy telling her why I kissed her.” 

An old bill; nearly forty years old. Let’s see; this hap¬ 
pened at Christmas, 1917. Forty years ago would be 1877; 
nearly forty years might be thirty-eight or thirty-seven;—say 
1879 or 1880. Yes; it would be rather an old bill now, though 
when he took it up to Abbey Ridge that dreary night it was 
scarcely dry from Mark Bonafede’s careful pen. It would look 
strangely familiar even after all these years. He could see 
again the floridly ornamented letters of his father’s name, and 
the brief formula which in those days he had not quite under¬ 
stood : 

“To MARK BONAFEDE, Dr.” 

So the bill had been preserved. The bill which his father 
would not try to collect; on which he himself had vainly 
hoped to write his own name and the cheerful words, “Settled, 
with thanks,” was at last to be settled in another way. Was 
it better so? 

Samuel Jessop owed Mark Bonafede thirty-seven shillings 
and sixpence, with interest. And from that bit of paper—it 
must be yellow with age by now—to which a hungry boy had 
fixed his hopes of supper long ago, had sprung new hopes, new 
bonds, uniting his family with that of the man he once had 


272 


SHODDY 


envied and hated,—who, unwitting, had shown him a philos¬ 
ophy. He did not agree with Viola that the affair would not 
last. Marcus’s story had not so impressed him. 

It was a whimsical fancy; “I wonder if those two old men 
can know what their grandchildren are up to.” 

v 

For more than a year fragments of the letters which Mar¬ 
cus wrote home to friends had been finding their way into 
print. His father began it when he showed one of the letters 
to a newspaper friend, who took it and asked for more. He 
also asked for the names of other people to whom Marcus was 
writing, and the Bishop referred him to several, including 
Rhoda Middleton and the assistant football coach at Tech. 

There was no special reason for holding back such extracts 
from the letters as the paper wanted, for these parts were quite 
impersonal in content, though not at all in form. Marcus had a 
nice faculty for writing with each recipient’s distinctive traits 
in mind, so that each letter, fitted to its reader, had a quality 
much sought after in modern newspaper practice. 

Before long he had a letter from a New York syndicate to 
the general effect that it needed such stuff as he was writing 
to his friends, and asking for a series addressed to such groups 
as the boys in the camps and cantonments, the old folks at 
home, the industrial workers, the college students, and the 
business men who must put over the Liberty loans. 

Naturally his range could not include active fighting, either 
present or recent. Lieutenant Blythe, the censor who passed 
on his work, so far from discouraging him, went out of his way 
to enlarge the boy’s market. 

“Bonafede,” said he one day, “I assume that in the States 
they really print these letters of yours.” 

“Yes sir, so far. There seems to be something about the 
stuff which they like, though it’s just what anybody might 
write if he cared to.” 

“Quite. But, you know, few people seem to care to. And 
your work is not half bad. Even I can see that, just by read¬ 
ing it straight from your pen. I’ve been wondering if it might 
go, in England. Fresh touch; new point of view, Anglo-Ameri¬ 
can approach; if you follow me. Mind if I tip off a friend of 
mine in Fleet Street?” 


SHODDY 


273 


Marcus did not mind, and in a month he would have begun 
a series for a group of provincial dailies, but for the fact that 
he was back in the trenches, a mud-colored atom among the 
many thousands who were grimly holding against the first onset 
of the big German push from Ypres to the Somme. 

During that not altogether glorious exploit of British arms, 
Marcus’s good fortune failed him at last, and with what seemed 
sheer perversity. A raid into the German lines impended, and 
the Germans, more than suspecting it, began, forty-five minutes 
before zero, to send a barrage across. Marcus, stepping over 
the splash board of his dugout at the right—or wrong—mo¬ 
ment, emerged in perfect time with the arrival of a shell which 
barely cleared the parapet, and buried him with two others in 
a smother of mud, filthy water and miscellaneous wreckage. 
One of the two came out unmarked; the other died where he 
lay. Marcus, struggling free from the debris, found that some¬ 
thing was wrong with his left arm. It turned out to be a shell 
splinter, with complications. 

The dressing station, dealing with him shortly enough, be¬ 
cause business was unexpectedly brisk, gave him hasty first 
aid, and directions to the better facilities far to the rear. 
Thither he made his way, cautiously, with several others whose 
legs were still able to carry them. 

Hitherto Marcus had looked on the walking wounded as 
lucky men; they were out of it, and yet a long way from be¬ 
ing as dead as they had expected to be. 

It is different when one joins that drab procession. Mind 
and spirit are let down. For the man who has been wounded 
in action, the furious grim joy of the fight is past. The man 
who, like Marcus, had hoped for a modest share in some be¬ 
devilling of the enemy, is half relieved, half jealous, that for 
the moment he can have no more part in whatever may be 
afoot. Certainly there were some not at all depressed. To 
them, months of war-weariness had made their wounds wel¬ 
come. Others, with smaller excuse, spoke without shame of 
their chance of Blighty. 

A week of surgical treatment and observation sufficed to 
show that Private Marcus Bonafede’s arm could not be patched 
up for further war use. Though hand and fingers were as good 
as ever, the arm would be stiff for months, perhaps years. 
Therefore, in the usual course, he would be invalided to Eng- 


274 


SHODDY 


land, and ultimately to Canada, the place of his enlistment. 
Meanwhile, he began once more to use his pen. 

But Lieutenant Blythe had thought of a better way to dis¬ 
pose of a casualty who could write such useful letters home. 
Naturally, the high gods of the staff must first be propitiated, 
and the customary rites performed; but when all this had been 
attended to, in the sketchily careless way of the English, and 
when Marcus had wormed his way through labyrinths of red 
tape and had done obeisance before dozens of brass hats, he 
found himself with a second lieutenant’s commission in the 
Blankshires, a ten day furlough—which he spent in Thornlea 
—and orders which attached him for escort duty to the Minis¬ 
try of Information. 

His job, when it was explained to him, seemed as near a 
perpetual holiday as one could ask, though in practice it had 
its difficult moments. He was assigned as one of the escorts to 
American newspaper visitors whom, in the last year of the 
war, the Northcliffe genius for propaganda was bringing, 
Cook’s tourist fashion, to England and the Western front. 

Blythe had written, in effect, though with due use of official 
verbiage, to the appointing powers, “This boy knows how to 
write, and he should be useful to press men, especially Ameri¬ 
cans, being an American himself. He’s no more use at the 
front; give him a lieutenancy, and attach him to the ministry 
for service with the American journalists.” The facts were so 
obvious that even a Whitehall functionary could take them in. 

vi 

Tech was in full war paint. In that spring of 1918 it was 
much more like a military camp than a vocational university. 

The atmosphere of the place and time affected all its activi¬ 
ties, in the churches as well as in the class rooms and on the 
campus. Sermons were preached on texts chosen mainly from 
the Old Testament. The imprecatory Psalms came in for a 
new season of popularity. God had become once more the 
God of battles, the Avenger, the Destroyer of the proud. 
Preachers exalted the righteousness of war, though most of 
them insisted that it must be a war without hate. There was 
much talk of the clean sword, and of the war against war, and 
the stand of the Western powers was lauded as an uprising 
against militarism. 


SHODDY 


275 


Scarce a preacher of them all but said* or implied, that once 
this war was won, there would be universal beating of swords 
into plowshares; nations would learn war no more. Peace, 
world-wide and lasting, was to come. In the meantime the 
Potsdam Gang must be exterminated, the Hun driven from 
whatever gate he was assumed to be hammering at. 

This was Peter Middleton’s hardest year. People began to 
notice that he was not furiously preaching the Crusade. He 
had no lack of themes, nor did he want for a hearing; his con¬ 
gregations were limited only by the size of the hut, and, in 
good weather, by the width of its open windows. 

Some of the boys in khaki frankly said, when, as often hap¬ 
pened, Middleton was being informally discussed, that they 
liked to hear him, because after you’d been next to war talk 
and drill and K.P. and fatigue duty all week, it was not so 
bad on Sunday to go to church, where maybe you could for¬ 
get it. 

“And how can you, if the preacher is damning the Kaiser, 
and telling us we’re the saviors of civilization? Me for Mid¬ 
dleton, and at least a trace of the Christianity we used to hear 
in most any church up to last spring.” 

“That’s me, too. We’re all in this, now, but how are we 
so sure this year that France and England are lily-white inno¬ 
cents, when only about a year ago half the United States 
thought Germany had something of a case? How much worse 
is she now than when Wilson was telling us to be neutral in 
thought and word?” 

“Shut up, you! That’s rotten talk from a man in uniform. 
You’ll land in the guard house if you ain’t careful. Germany’s 
the enemy, and don’t you forget it. Your man Middleton bet¬ 
ter remember it, too, or he’s in for trouble. They do say he’s 
pro-German, and is afraid to come right out and admit it.” 

With such talk going on among the soldiers, Peter could 
not expect to escape attention from those always more mili¬ 
tant citizens whose only outlet for their war-energy was talk. 
With the exception of a professor or two, all these were out¬ 
side his constituency; he was not nearly so much troubled by 
them as he would have been if he had been pastor of an ordi¬ 
nary town church. Students have a great capacity for toleration. 

It was his friend Aaron Leyton who reported some of the 
more damaging accusations which were passing from lip to lip. 


276 


SHODDY 


“I met the district superintendent yesterday/’ he said, being 
in Great Meadows on one of his frequent visits, “and he seems 
to be worried about you.” 

“Yes?” said Peter. “What’s up?” 

“Oh, nothing new. But he’s afraid the talk about your be¬ 
ing of German birth, and your changed name, coupled with 
the fact that you don’t preach the usual brand of patriotic 
sermon, is going to embarrass you; and, incidentally, of course, 
himself as your supervising officer.” 

“So I’m of German birth, am I?” queried Peter. “Well, I 
am German on one side, though I never changed my name. 
That was done before I was born, and when the only prospect 
of war in sight was with the Sioux and the Apaches.” 

“Of course; I understand,” said Mr. Leyton. “But it’s what 
is being said.” 

“I know,” Peter sighed. “What I’d like to know, though, is 
who told the superintendent my name had been changed, now 
or ever.” 

Mr. Leyton didn’t know. “The fact itself is news to me. I 
said I understood only because I take your explanation as it 
stands.” 

“The fact is news to everybody,” said Peter. “I hadn’t 
thought of it for years. But here it is. My father’s name was 
Heinrich Mittelstadt; he ran away from German militarism 
after the troubles of 1848, in which as a very young man he 
was somehow involved. Before he had been long in this coun¬ 
try he changed his name to Henry Middleton, just because 
he wanted to show himself an American through and through, 
name and all. And my mother—well, some of her people came 
over in the Mayflower, and you’ll find names of their de¬ 
scendants among the first students of Harvard. She was from 
Cape Cod. How does all that make me a pro-German?” 

“Not nearer than three thousand miles, I should say,” an¬ 
swered his friend. “I don’t understand how the story got 
started. The district superintendent told he he had been meet¬ 
ing with some sort of a commission in Iliopolis, and that it had 
been talked there.” 

“Would that be the Commission on Cooperation with the 
Food Administration?” 

“Yes; that’s the very one.” 

“Was Bishop Bonafede there? He’s the Chairman.” 


SHODDY 277 

“Why, yes, I think he was. In fact the superintendent told 
me as much, now that you ask.” 

Peter changed the subject. He did not need to ask more, 
and was not inclined to explain his question about Bishop 
Bonafede. So they spent the rest of the evening talking about 
Leyton Center; plans were going forward in spite of the war. 
There was no embargo on plans and planning, though actual 
building was out of the question. 

After Leyton had gone, Peter could not sleep until he had 
written a short note to Bartelmy Bonafede. 

“My dear Bart,” it ran, “couldn’t you have found some¬ 
thing else to talk about than what you learned when you were 
my father’s guest, more than thirty years ago? It doesn’t 
seem to have much to do with today’s affairs. There’s nothing 
I can do, of course, if you insist on keeping it up. But you 
know the exact truth. Will you tell it? You know the man my 
father was. Will you tell that? Perhaps it is foolish of me to 
remind you that he was your friend when you hadn’t as many 
friends as you have now.” 

To which the bishop made prompt answer. “Somebody has 
been grievously misrepresenting me,” he wrote, “though I can’t 
imagine why. The only time I have ever mentioned the mat¬ 
ter of your German name was at lunch the other day, during 
a meeting of the Commission. A remark had been made about 
your ability to find sermon subjects that had nothing to do 
with the war, and I merely happened to say that you prob¬ 
ably inherited a disinclination toward things warlike, because 
your father, though a German, was a pronounced hater of 
war, and that the family name was changed partly for that 
reason. Of course I know that the thing he hated was the 
German militarism which had grown up especially under Bis¬ 
marck. I cannot believe you are ashamed of these things, but 
if you feel sensitive on the subject I assure you it will not be 
mentioned again by me.” 

Peter read the answer with mixed pity and wonder. It de¬ 
pressed him. He knew there was nothing Bart had done to 
which he could take open exception. The facts were there, 
and in ordinary times they would do no harm. But in times 
like these the most innocent fact could take on sinister mean¬ 
ings, and Bart, even to him, had made it seem as though Peter 
were trying to conceal something damaging. There was no 


278 


SHODDY 


significance, as Bart very well knew, in his promise, if it was 
a promise, not to say more about the matter. Once was 
enough. Tongues would not be lacking to carry the ugly- 
looking thing where it would do the most harm. 

As a matter of fact, it didn’t go very far. It almost came 
to a head within the week, and got a check from which it did 
not recover. 

The trustees of the Oxford Fellowship came to Great 
Meadows for a stated meeting; among them Bishops Randolph 
and Eberle. 

Said Bishop Randolph, during Peter’s temporary absence 
from the room, “What’s this I hear about Brother Middleton 
being luke-warm toward the war? We can’t stand for that, 
you know. I’m quite ready to acknowledge the good work he 
has done here, especially since he has had the generous as¬ 
sistance of Brother Leyton. But it will all go for naught if 
the people, and especially the government, should be led to 
believe that the Oxford Fellowship is not one hundred per cent 
for the war, the nation, and the Allies.” 

Brother Leyton rose to speak. He was angry. But Bishop 
Eberle checked him. “If you please, Brother Leyton. I think 
I know what you want, and I want it, too. There’s a way to 
get it.” Then addressing Bishop Randolph he said, “I suggest 
that this matter is not before us officially, and until it is we 
have nothing on which to take action. And let me say, lest 
anybody should think it advisable to raise the issue, that I 
know where the rumors about Middleton originated, and I 
shall not hesitate, if the business does come up, to open it 
out in all its ramifications, wherever they may lead.” 

Because Bishop Randolph knew his colleague, without nec¬ 
essarily being passionate in his fondness for him, and knew 
that he would undoubtedly be as good as his word, he chose 
the prudent course. 

“I have no desire whatever,” he said coldly, “to stir up 
trouble. I was merely seeking to protect the good name of 
the Fellowship.” 

“Quite so,” said Bishop Eberle. “And, if I may say so, I 
am merely seeking to protect the peace and quietness of the 
church, including the episcopacy. As for Brother Middleton, 
you can make me personally responsible for his good be¬ 
haviour, if you wish.” 


SHODDY 


279 


Bishop Randolph would have liked to ask who could be 
made responsible for Bishop Eberle; but second thought kept 
him from uttering what everybody knew was in his mind. 

VII 

Marcus stopped in London just long enough to get one of 
the thrown-together uniforms of the period, and was off for 
Yorkshire, wiring ahead the news that Norfolk Lodge was in 
for another visitation from the trenches. 

All the Jessops welcomed him; he was becoming part of the 
huge drama in which the English lived, and wondered how; he 
was the more readily accepted because he brought a touch of 
love and hope into the grim tale of the days. 

Willy Jessop was in the worst of the fighting; but no news 
is good news, until suddenly it isn’t. At any rate, no bad news 
had yet come. And the amazing English could work, and en¬ 
tertain guests, and read newspapers, and look each other in 
the face without flinching. It cost; but the price was paid in 
private. 

And the- romance which had suddenly bloomed at Christmas 
seemed almost too free of flaw, in days like these. The Jessops, 
though they were familiar with war time’s swift courtships, 
were something dazed by the speed of this one which involved 
their girl. But from the first Mrs. Jessop had taken to Mar¬ 
cus, and her husband could find no fault in him. All they 
wanted to know now was that his people would be equally 
ready to approve the engagement. 

Marcus airily waved away the possibility of any objection 
from the Bonafede side. 

“Though I must make a confession,” he said one night when 
the family were gathered after dinner before the fire. “I am 
not what you think I am—that is, my father is not; I mean, 
I didn’t tell you, when I was here before, anything about him 
except that he’s a Methodist minister. Well, he is; but that’s 
not all. He had been for several years one of the church’s 
general officers, and two years ago the General Conference 
made him a bishop.” 

“A bishop? Why, Marcus; and you never told us!” This 
from Judith; the others took the news less explosively, but 
it was clear that they were no little impressed. 


280 


SHODDY 


“Please, now, don’t be so shocked,” Marcus said, half seri¬ 
ously. “A Methodist bishop is not so bad; and not so wonder¬ 
ful, either. I’ve known several of them. Of course he’s not 
like your English bishops. As a matter of fact, he’s not that 
sort of a bishop,—just a general officer of the church. Only, 
ior the work he and the others of his group have to do, they’re 
called bishops. I don’t know much about it, but I’ve heard 
them often at conferences and such places, and being a bishop 
in our church seems to mean a lot of work and responsibility, 
more than anything else.” 

Jane Depledge was the first to recover. “Bishop Bonafede,” 
she mused. “Sounds well, don’t you think? And then, he’s 
from Thornlea. The Recorder will love that.” 

Mr. Jessop nodded. “Why not?” he asked. “Thornlea has 
not had too many opportunities to congratulate itself on the 
success of its sons. But of course we shall not say anything 
about it that might embarrass you, Marcus, my boy.” 

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Marcus. “It’s almost as new a 
thing to me as it is to you, you know. I’ve never seen him 
since it happened. But it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Only 
don’t tell anybody until I get away. I know something about 
these newspaper men.” 

This visit there was no merrymaking. Holidays were past, 
and Willy Jessop was in Gough’s army, from which not much 
good news had come of late. The great German friedensturm 
was raging in full fury, and all England seemed to know that 
the supreme crisis was at hand. Deep soberness of mood had 
settled on the people. They were far removed from despair, 
and yet,—if only America were a little nearer ready. 

Judith and Marcus took long walks in the spring fields and 
woods, and all about the town. They were able, by dint of a 
little investigating, to spot Balaklava Terrace, and the little 
house in which Bishop Bonafede was born. On another day 
they found Mark Bonafede’s old shop, at the bottom of the 
Cliff Road, and, in a neighborhood now decaying, the former 
home of the bishop’s grandfather, Jonas Oldroyd. The registers 
of the parish church yielded treasure, and many other evi¬ 
dences of the Bonafede share in Thornlea life were found, until 
Marcus said, “I feel as if you and I were celebrating Old 
Home Week all by ourselves, Judith.” 


SHODDY 281 

Whereupon he must needs explain Old Home Week and its 
customs. Judith could not quite see it. 

“The idea of people in such a new country as America,” she 
said, “coming back to any one spot in it and thinking of that 
spot in terms of ancient times. Why, I thought it was all 
new!” 

Again Marcus had to explain, offering bits of history, with 
dates, to show that the thing could easily be, until Judith 
laughed and said, “Why, of course, I see. Even that Parker- 
ville you told me about must seem ancient, to you, because you 
were only a child when you lived there. Do you suppose that 
Norfolk Lodge will be like that to me, when—” she had the 
grace to blush—”when I’ve become an old woman in Amer¬ 
ica?” 

To such a question there could be only one answer, an 
answer which put Old Home Week quite out of the conversa¬ 
tion. 

VIII 

Life became to Marcus a continuous business of arrivings 
and departings. The American journalists who came under his 
wing were surprised to find an American boy in a British 
officer’s uniform, and, what was more, a boy who knew some¬ 
thing of their trade and its jargon. They took him to their 
hearts. 

The Northcliffe idea of dealing with these Americans was 
perfect newspaper diplomacy. They were the guests of the 
government, free to ask questions, to think what they would, 
and, within bounds which were never mentioned, to go where 
they pleased. 

The successive groups were shown the London Docks and 
told about shipping control. They walked through miles of 
munitions works. They were wined and dined by Lord Pro¬ 
vosts, Lord Mayors, lords without portfolios, and other expert 
hosts. The more literary were given an evening at the Cheshire 
Cheese with such men to meet them as Owen Seaman of Punch , 
Lionel Curtis of the Round Table, the Editor of the Times, 
Leo Maxse, A. G. Gardiner, and Sir Gilbert Parker. 

The political minded drew a luncheon at the Criterion, with 
men like Lord Bryce, Lord Robert Cecil, and Walter Long to 
talk to them. They discussed drink control with Waldorf 


282 


SHODDY 


Astor and his sprightly Virginian wife, education with W. A. L. 
Fisher, hands-across-the-sea with Evelyn Wrench, the founder 
of the English-Speaking Union, and religion with Stuart Hol¬ 
den, Robertson Nicoll, and the Archbishop of Canterbury. If, 
after all this, they still were unable or unwilling to write good 
stuff for their papers, then Northcliffe had so far failed. But 
there were few failures. 

Of course they went as near the front as was sensible, and 
they admitted that what they saw of the war was “a-plenty”. 
They had Paris for education and diversion, and the American 
army showed them Gievres and Romorantin and a German 
prisoners’ corral. 

All this Marcus saw, heard and shared. He bought tickets 
and reserved rooms and worked out routes of travel over every 
British railway from Southampton to the Forth, and criss-cross 
on the distracted French railway lines. In between, he gave 
good advice about how to behave in England to those Ameri¬ 
cans who would take it gratefully from a fellow-American, 
though they would have cast it in an Englishman’s teeth. 

The private joys of his job came on the British north and 
south journeys,—the trips to Gretna and the Clyde and the 
Grand Fleet off Rosyth. For these trips must needs take him 
and his party through Yorkshire, and always there was at 
least a five-minute stop at some railway center not too remote 
from Thornlea. 

It needed only a wire to Norfolk Lodge, and Judith would 
find some way of being on the station platform when the 
train slipped in. Marcus always gave his American charges 
advance notice that he was not responsible for what happened 
at this stop. “Look out for yourselves, fellows,” he would say; 
“I’ve a girl waiting to see me when we pull into Leeds.” 

What mattered it if Jane Depledge came with Judith? Mar¬ 
cus would kiss her, too, no one objecting; but the time was 
the lovers’ five minutes, with his own girl to take in his arms, 
his girl’s blue eyes to look into, and his girl’s dewy lips to kiss. 

“You’re becoming famous in Thornlea,” said Judith after 
the first greetings during one of these glimpses of Paradise. 
“The Recorder prints your articles, and always speaks of you 
as a son of Thornlea. Bonafede has become an important 
name in the town, and people are remembering that your 
grandfather was a well-known employer in his day, though 


SHODDY 


283 


Dad says he may have had one helper, no more, if the old 
shop we found at the bottom of the Cliff Road was really his. 
They want to see you; they’re sorry they knew nothing of 
all this when you were here at Christmas. They want to see 
your father, too. If he would come over from America, the 
town of his birth would give Bishop Bonafede a great welcome.’ , 

Marcus was not interested in his own Thornlea fame; and 
still less in the thought of his father’s return. Once that might 
have been pleasant, but now he was bothered by too many 
questions about his father. Thornlea, like every other town 
in Britain, was a place of universal but reticent suffering. 
Scarce a home but had paid its footing in the war, in the 
bodies of its best beloved and in its own soul. With all his 
eagerness to be loyal to his father, Marcus could not help 
thinking what the Bishop’s war talk, or any probable varia¬ 
tion of it, would do the raw nerves of Thornlea. 

“I’m too busy to come, dear, until after these newspaper 
trips are over, and it’s astonishing how many American news¬ 
paper men are willing to endure the necessary hardships. It’s 
wonderful that we can have even a minute like this, now and 
then. As for father, he has his hands full at home. The church 
has made him something or other connected with war work 
over there, and he’s on the go continually. So Thornlea must 
carry on without the Bonafedes, for a while, I guess. But let’s 
not talk of that. We have three minutes left for more im¬ 
portant business.” 

IX 

When the Armistice came, some of the Government’s war 
activities were too tough to be immediately affected. But on 
November 11, the Ministry of Information realized that its 
excuse for being had vanished. For a couple of months it 
functioned, but with increasing clumsiness. The heart was 
gone out of it. Why not? Who cared for propaganda, when, 
partly as a result of its work, the enemy had sued for peace? 

Engagements entered into, however, must be kept. And the 
Americans whose itineraries were not completed at the Armis¬ 
tice had nothing to complain of. They saw as good a show as 
the changed conditions had left on exhibition; munitions works 
still producing on uncancelled contracts, the Grand Fleet an¬ 
chored under the Forth Bridge, the British Front in process of 


284 


SHODDY 


being cleared of its most obvious war stuff. And they had 
their appointed tale of dinners and luncheons, with —in Eng¬ 
land—their ration books, and week-end visits to country houses. 

The visitors’ chateau, somewhere back of Boulogne, was 
still in commission, in charge of a Major who wore the Mons 
button, two other officers who like him, by reason of wounds, 
were long ago off the combatant strength, and a few privates 
serving as orderlies. 

From this center, such of the front as was at the moment 
accessible to non-combatants could be seen in three days; one 
day for the Hazebrouck-Ypres circuit, one day for the regions 
about Vimy Ridge, and one day for the Somme. The details 
of each day’s tour depended on Major Biles’ judgment, the 
weather, and the visitors’ capacity for punishment. Most of 
them saw as much as was good for them, and said so. 

Marcus had taken a group over in mid-December, and that 
night, after dinner, they were looking over the O. C.’s little 
collection of souvenirs—mainly propaganda stuff which had 
been fed out of the sky to the German trenches by British 
aeroplanes. A captain whom he knew slightly, that afternoon 
back from a bit of official hospitality in Paris, took Marcus 
aside. 

“I say, Bonafede, did you know your pater was over here?” 

Marcus looked incredulous. “I certainly did not,” he said. 
“Are you sure?” 

“Not an earthly doubt. I was introduced to him and sev¬ 
eral other clerical gentlemen, just in from their ship. But I 
had no idea then that he was related to you. Found that out 
afterwards.” 

Marcus felt that he must say something. “Well, if dad’s 
here—. And yet, I remember he said in his last letter he 
hoped he might be sent across on some demobbing mission or 
other. Evidently that’s what’s happened. I wonder if I can 
get off to see him?” 

As soon as he was able to make his excuses he sought his 
room in the chateau tower. What was he to do? Get away 
to Paris, of course, and greet the father he had not seen since 
before he had run away and joined up. And something else. 
Had his father come over here to repeat that awful speech, or 
any other like it? If so— 

A month ago he would have been unable to do anything, ex- 


SHODDY 


285 


cept perhaps to write a note and take the chances of its reach¬ 
ing the bishop. But now, since the work of the Ministry had 
visibly relaxed, he might actually get to Paris for a few hours. 

The next morning early he went to Major Biles and put as 
much of the case before him as was necessary. 

“Well, Bonafede,” said the Major, “I suppose you have as 
much right to see your father as any of us, and he probably 
would like to see you, after these three years.” 

“I hope so, sir. And I have my own reasons for wanting to 
talk with him. Of course I have no right to ask for special 
favors.” 

“Quite,” said the Major, who had heard of the girl in York¬ 
shire, and who, like most Englishmen at the end of the war, 
was foolishly sentimental about any romance which might now 
have a chance to culminate in the good old conventional way. 
“But, as it happens, you are under my orders while here. And 
also, by good luck for you, Captain Kennedy is ordered home. 
He is guide for today’s drive to Vimy, and so will strike up an 
acquaintance with our guests. Suppose I put him in charge 
when they go home on Friday, and let you take two days’ 
leave before you are due to report at the Ministry? Will that 
serve? Your father’s time is doubtless limited, too.” 

“Thank you very much, Major,” said Marcus, which was 
utterly contrary to regulations. But life at the chateau under 
Major Biles had always been shockingly informal. Its entire 
staff was composed of men who were here because the war 
could no longer use them. 

The Major shook hands and smiled. “Consider yourself re¬ 
lieved at once. You can get the train for Paris which passes 
through Abbeville about noon. Do you know where to find 
your father?” 

“No, sir; but the Y.M.C.A. in the Rue d’Aguesseau will 
know. I’ve been there several times, and they keep a record of 
all American religious workers coming to France. I shall go 
there direct.” 

“And give my compliments to your father. You may say 
to him, if you like, that for an American his son has made a 
fairly satisfactory British soldier.” 

Marcus blushed as no second lieutenant ought to blush, and 
made his escape. 

At the famous Y headquarters they told him, “Yes, Bishop 


286 


SHODDY 


Bonafede arrived yesterday, and is still in town, stopping at 
the Grand, in the Boulevard des Italiens. He is leaving to¬ 
morrow night.” 

These two had not met since the day, almost three years 
before, when Marcus, home from Tech for Christmas, had 
gloated over his father’s share in the setting up of the Oxford 
Fellowship. 

But since then there had been an election to the episcopacy, 
and, that terrible speech about which Jock Huntress had 
ragged him so unmercifully. Now that they were face to face, 
it was the soldier who was self-conscious and awkward; the 
bishop, taken by surprise, could not contain his joy. He sprang 
forward, and took his son in his arms. 

“Marcus! How come you here?” And, without waiting for 
any answer, he held him at arm’s length a moment. “My dear, 
dear boy;—what a man you are! Why, the pictures you sent 
us are caricatures. You look as fit as a fiddle, and a soldier if 
ever I saw one.” 

Marcus could not resist it, nor did he want to. His father’s 
exuberant joy in the meeting warmed his own heart. This was 
his father, after all. Nothing else mattered; at least, not now. 

They were in the bishop’s room. “Sit down, Marcus, and 
let me look at you again. There’s a story, of course; but it 
can wait. Two years in France, and you are still alive. Thank 
God for that. Oh, yes; your arm; how is it?” 

Marcus showed him. Stiff, a little yet, but not hopelessly 
so. “See, here’s the mark the bit of shell made that did the 
mischief. I got off mighty easy.” 

“You did, my son; you did. I’m devoutly thankful it’s no 
worse. Your mother and I have worried a good deal for fear 
it might cripple you permanently. The pictures have reas¬ 
sured us somewhat, though, as I say, they could be much bet¬ 
ter, as portraits. But they’ve been a real comfort. And your 
letters—private and public—do you know you are a public 
character at home?” 

And so he talked. At intervals Marcus got in a word, or a 
question about his mother and people in general. 

“But, how did you manage to get over here?” he contrived 
at last to ask. “You said in your last letter that you would 
like to come, but I never supposed you really would.” 

“It’s a long story,” said the bishop. “The gist of it is that 


SHODDY 


287 


every American soldier wants to get home. Getting them home 
is almost as difficult as was getting them here, and some will 
be here for quite a while yet. So I offered to come over and 
take a month’s speaking tour among the troops—helping to 
maintain morale, and all that sort of thing, you know. I 
wanted to have some slight share in this great adventure. You 
left rather abruptly yourself, if you remember; though we long 
ago decided to say nothing about that. I hope you don’t grudge 
me this month’s experience, even though it is post-war.” 

“Grudge it—you? Why, father, it’s just the thing, if you 
can help keep the boys from getting blue while they’re waiting. 
The next three months will be hard on them, whether they 
stay in France or go into Germany as part of the Army of 
Occupation. Anybody who can hold them steady will be do¬ 
ing a big piece of war work, even if the war is over.” 

“Well, my boy, I’m glad you think so. You helped the 
morale at home, at first by enlisting and this year by your 
letters. It will feel good to me to take up something of the 
same task.” 

There was that in his father’s tone which brought Marcus 
squarely up against the reason for his hurrying to Paris. Yet 
how could he say what he knew he must, or run the risk of 
worse things to come? Here he was again assuming to sit in 
judgment on his father—a man of vast experience and en¬ 
trusted with great responsibilities. 

He would feel his way about, first. “What is your program, 
father?” 

“Well, I’m to go about under the auspices of the Y among 
the camps and other places where troops are stationed, and 
talk to the boys; inspirational speeches, you know. Sort of 
combination of religion and patriotism.” 

“That’s all right, father. But you’ll be able to give them 
some speeches on religion, straight, too, won’t you? Since I 
came on to this job I’ve been among the boys a good deal, both 
the British and our own; and I think I know what they would 
like.” 

“I see; but Marcus, don’t you think that religion must be 
taken for granted, a little? I must talk first about the great 
cause in which they have been engaged, and how proud we all 
are of them.” 

“Yes, I know. And that’s a subject they have had talked 


288 


SHODDY 


at them ever since they registered for the draft. But religion, 
real religion, they’ve not had so often that they can’t stand 
more. And soldiers don’t care how straight religious talk is. 
They like it that way.” 

“And nothing about patriotism, Marcus?” 

“Well, religion and patriotism, as they usually get it, make 
a rather unpopular mixture for our doughboys. And for the 
Tommies, as well. They don’t need patriotism preached to 
them; they’ve been in this war. They’ve seen their buddies die 
for their country. So they know pretty near as much about 
patriotism as anybody from home—forgive me, father, I don’t 
mean to be personal—can teach them.” 

“Possibly so; but do you think they know the implication 
of the Armistice and of the peace which is to follow?” 

“I can’t say. Me, I don’t understand those things, a little 
bit. But I do understand that the boys know the war’s over. 
Since they didn’t go to Berlin before the Armistice, they have 
no special longing to go now.” 

“And do you think,” the bishop asked, “that they would 
be impatient with a man who tried to tell them something of 
the great issues involved?” 

“Excuse me, father, but I certainly do. They’re fed up on 
issues; think they’ve made some themselves. They’ve won 
the war—the soldiers of all the Allies, I mean. They know 
they won’t have much chance at making the peace. That will 
depend on public opinion and the politicians. Public opinion 
is the job of people with influence at home, like yourself.” 

“But what, then, do you think I ought to speak about?” The 
bishop seemed perplexed. 

“What I said, religion; the boys want something as far re¬ 
moved from war as possible. Give ’em undiluted religion. 
They’ll thank you; not in words, maybe, but in the attention 
they give you. If I may be bold, talk about Jesus Christ. 
They’d rather hear about following him than hanging the 
Kaiser. The Kaiser’s through, and they know it.” 

Bartelmy looked at this soldier, who indubitably was his 
son. What had happened to him? He used to be such a quiet, 
easily satisfied youngster; always obedient and respectful, until 
that astonishing day when he ran off to the war. And now 
he was talking to his bishop-father, man-to-man fashion, and 
not over respectfully, either. 


SHODDY 


289 


“I wonder if you realize, Marcus,” he said, “the situation 
in which I am placed. Two weeks ago, when I was assigned to 
duty over here, the appointment was made because of what 
the appointing powers knew about me. They knew I had been 
in demand as a speaker on war subjects. They knew that I 
was one of the first to realize America’s full duty in the war. 
And, because I was also a bishop of the greatest Protestant 
American church, they thought my words would carry weight 
among the soldiers.” 

“Forgive me, father,” said Marcus, slowly, “but the Y knew 
better than that last thing you’ve said. They had other rea¬ 
sons, of course; good ones, but they never thought of sending 
you here because your being a bishop would cut any ice with 
the boys. They’ve had experiences, both with bishops and 
with other folks. Some of the bishops have been positively 
great, and some have been absolute flops. The title has nothing 
• to do with it. I’m proud you’re a bishop, all right, but you 
don’t catch me talking about it, not to soldiers. I’m sorry; 
but that’s just how it is.” 

“Marcus, my boy, you’re overwrought. You have had ex¬ 
perience, but so have I. And it seems to me that the services 
my training and position have enabled me to give to the coun¬ 
try during the past eighteen months would not be altogether 
unacceptable to my country’s soldiers.” 

“Oh, dad,—” Marcus broke in, forgotting that he had in¬ 
tended to say “father”—“please dad, listen to me. You won’t 
have anything but trouble if you start out on that line. I tell 
you, I know. The boys are fed up on all that. Why, they’ve 
been in the war! Don’t you see? Fought it, hungry and muddy 
and bloody and all smashed up, and dead set on getting the job 
done and over with. The men who’ve come out of it are through. 
They may say—I’ve heard ’em—Tt was a bum war, but it was 
better than none.’ But they say it just because the business is 
ended. The war is fini! They’ll walk out on you, sure, if they 
do nothing worse, the moment you begin the sort of thing 
that went over big at home a year ago. The world’s changed 
since then; and the men who helped to change it have spoiled 
that speech of yours. It won’t go so good, with them.” 

The bishop, greatly hurt, held up a protesting hand. 

“Please, Marcus, don’t let your feelings get the better of 
you. You misjudge me. I’m not intending to disrupt anything. 


290 


SHODDY 


I have talked to soldiers, great audiences of them, and with 
no small success. But let’s not discuss this any further. We 
have our own interests to talk about. I want you to tell me 
about that strange love affair of yours, and how it prospers. 
We have only tomorrow morning, and it’s midnight now. We 
mustn’t spoil our first meeting since you went away.” 

Marcus was tired, and knew he ought not to yield to this 
half-savage mood, so he readily agreed to his father’s plea. 
He had taken a room near by, in which he slept badly. The 
two spent the morning together, looking about Paris a bit, 
but did not resume the conversation of the night before. 

Marcus did talk about Judith. When he came to descrip¬ 
tions of Thornlea, and Abbey Ridge, and Norfolk Lodge, his 
listener followed more keenly than he guessed. Bishop Bona- 
fede was on the point, more than once, of interrupting and 
saying, “I know; I was at Norfolk Lodge myself, once.” But 
he put a guard on his tongue. One question he almost let slip; 
for a moment it seemed as if he had really spoken; “Do you 
remember whether they still have those bright rows of cook¬ 
ing utensils on the kitchen wall?” 

In the early afternoon Marcus went with the Bishop to the 
Gare d’Orleans, and saw him off to his first assignment. Then 
he turned his face again Londonward. 

x 

Within a week Bartelmy Bonafede realized that he was 
wasting his talents on this assignment. The secretaries and 
other workers did not seem to grasp the importance of his mis¬ 
sion. They put him on to speak before or after a movie, or a 
vaudeville turn, just as it happened. Their introductions when 
he did speak were brief to the point of curtness, and they 
proffered neither apologies nor praise. It almost seemed as if 
they considered him just a part of the day’s work, to be han¬ 
dled with as little concern as they would chocolate or cigarettes 
or writing materials. 

Nor did his audiences respond as he had expected. A few 
passages of his speech usually drew scattering applause, but 
the purple patches were unheeded, the flamboyant tributes to 
the never-defeated and ever stainless spirit of America, the 
apostrophes to the flag and its defenders, the maledictions on 


SHODDY 291 

Prussianism—all these not only failed to get a hand, but seemed 
to produce a mild distaste. 

As Marcus had foretold, many -in his audiences “walked out 
on” him. What sort of men were these soldiers, anyway? They 
might have done good service so long as their superiors did 
the thinking for them. But certainly they were sadly deficient 
in that ready intelligence which is the orator’s chief dependence. 

There was no doubt, also, that he was physically below par. 
He had not spared himself since the war began, and perhaps 
the coolness of his reception in these camps was nothing more 
than the last straw of his mind’s burden. 

At all events, he suddenly gave out. He could not go on. 
The thought of another day in a Y hut had become unbear¬ 
able. Backed by the wholly sincere testimony of his last Y 
secretary, he notified Paris that severe indisposition would pre¬ 
vent him from meeting his remaining engagements. Paris had 
dealt with such ailments before, and no longer made the mis¬ 
take of classing them as deliberate avoidance of disagreeable 
work. They had a genuine and easily explicable, if remote 
cause, and almost any form of frustration would bring them 
to the surface. 

A wire to Marcus, and within a week the bishop was in 
London. Marcus chanced ta be in town, winding up the last 
of his personally-conducted excursions. The war-pilgrimage of 
this group of Americans was ending with a luncheon at the 
Savoy, tendered by the English-Speaking Union. A civilian 
member of the Union, hearing that Bishop Bonafede had just 
arrived from France, said, “By all means bring your father, 
Lieutenant Bonafede. I fancy he’ll enjoy more of the pro¬ 
ceedings than you think.” 

What his friend meant Marcus had no idea, but that troubled 
him not at all. He was rather pleased that somebody had re¬ 
membered to invite his father. The bishop would discover that 
his son stood level with men of affairs, as well as with his 
military superiors. And it would not be wholly unpleasant 
that this last American party, as weW as those who were act¬ 
ing as hosts, should meet, in the person of his father, an 
American not unknown to fame. 

The only set speech would be by a celebrated English nov¬ 
elist and war historian, but even if Bishop Bonafede should be 
asked to say a few words, Marcus, in spite of what had passed 


292 


SHODDY 


between them in Paris, felt sure his father would rise grace¬ 
fully to the occasion. It was one of the things he did well. 

If only he had known of the plot! The group had commis¬ 
sioned two of its number to select something appropriate, and 
with much secrecy a small silver coffee service from Mappin 
and Webb’s had been agreed upon. 

The table, spread in a room overlooking the Thames, had 
about it as choice a company as one could seat at so modest 
a board. Because the guests were newspaper men, each of 
them was sandwiched between two British fellow craftsmen. 
An editor of the Illustrated London News, a leader writer on 
the Times, the conductor of a ponderous but most influential 
quarterly, a younger poet, and one of the four or five front- 
rank novelists of the day, had not disdained the occasion. Then 
there were two generals, a rear admiral, and some officials of 
the Ministry of Information. One of London’s best-loved clergy¬ 
men was included, and Bishop Bonafede was charmed at having 
him for a neighbor. 

The speaking at such affairs is much of a piece, but the 
historian-novelist gave a touch of freshness to the thinking of 
the hour by a graceful recognition of the United States, not 
as “our cousins across the Atlantic,” but as a sovereign and 
distinctive nation, deriving much from England, but much 
also from other and’diverse sources, and making her own mould 
for the civilization of the West. 

Then instead af a general movement into the adjoining 
reception room, Marcus was surprised to hear the chairman 
call on one of the Americans, “Who will say a few words on a 
personal matter.” 

Whereupon a grizzled veteran of the trade press, who con¬ 
trolled four or five technical journals of enormous importance 
in their fields, rose to his feet. 

“We should have been quite content in our travels,” he 
said, “to have been in the care of a British-born guide and 
protector, but by singular fortune our conducting officer, 
though in the British army, is one of our own boys.” 

Marcus, breathed hard, paled, and then went rosy, as his 
shameful habit was. Whatever was up? 

“We are sure,” went on the speaker, “he has not been more 
gracious nor more self-forgetful in our behalf than a son of 
Britain would have been. But, knowing our tribe and its pecul- 


SHODDY 


293 


iarities, he has been able to interpret our experiences to us, 
and at times to interpose himself between our ignorance and 
its otherwise inevitable consequences. We owe him a debt, not 
only for what he has done, but also for what he’s averted. And 
so I take great pleasure, in the name of us all, in presenting 
him with this slight reminder of our appreciation and gratitude. 

“A vision we saw in Yorkshire—and it was marvellously 
worth seeing—made us think that he has excellent prospects 
of carrying off another memento of his life on this side, and 
therefore we make bold to suggest that he put this coffee serv¬ 
ice away until such time as it can be displayed among the wed¬ 
ding gifts. It is not as fine a remembrance as he deserves, but 
it is in one respect like our estimate of his character; it is 
sterling!” (Applause.) Much pleased at the success of his im¬ 
promptu play upon words, Mr. Blanchard sat down. 

The chairman looked at Marcus. “May we have a word 
from you, Lieutenant Bonafede?” 

Marcus had known, with a sinking at the heart, as soon as 
the other’s purpose was revealed, that this call would come. He 
knew, too, that the merest expression of thanks would be quite 
sufficient, but something prompted him to say more, despite 
his shocking nervousness. 

“I can only say,” he began, “that I am astonished and 
taken aback and more grateful than words can tell. British 
military regulations are still much of a mystery to me, and I 
am not sure but all this is sternly forbidden. If so, it is one 
of the blunders of my countrymen, just alluded to, which as 
their conducting officer I ought to have prevented. But I was 
kept in ignorance. Since Mr. Blanchard has spoken of my 
rather inconsistent position, being of American birth and yet 
a British officer, may I add this one word? I have served under 
the British flag, and I have seen some of those nine hundred 
thousand young men die whom Britain could not afford to lose. 
Our American loss is more than Americans like to think about. 
But if your dead and ours could have known, as we were told 
and hoped, that we were really fighting the last war, the war 
to end war, these would have offered their lives even more 
gladly than they did. And I should have been yet prouder 
than I am that I had fought with them. But some of us who 
have come out alive are beginning to wonder just what the 
outcome is to be—the new day for which they died.” 


294 


SHODDY 


Some of the company smiled at his young seriousness, but 
that did not interfere with their applause. 

Then the chairman said, “We must adjourn in a moment, 
but I crave your indulgence long enough for me to introduce 
Bishop Bonafede, father of our friend, the lieutenant. The 
Bishop has come within the last twenty-four hours from a mis¬ 
sion to the American soldiers in France. Though British-born, 
he has long been an American, and has won high distinction in 
his adopted country as a clergyman and a citizen.” 

Bartelmy Bonafede would have liked more latitude. To 
speak before such a company was an opportunity as would 
never come again. He discerned, far more than the Ameri¬ 
cans could, the compliment their hosts paid them simply by 
being willing to come. But he saw that he must do no more 
than barely acknowledge his introduction. 

“I understand, of course,” said he, after a few words of 
thanks for “this unexpected recognition,” “that I am an out¬ 
sider, here on sufferance. This is the day of the distinguished 
speaker who has so felicitously spoken of my adopted country; 
and it is the day, if you will forgive a father’s prideful interest, 
of my soldier son. I think I understand what prompted his 
allusion to the soldier dead, but I know also that when he is 
once more an American civilian, if his country should call again 
on her youth, he will be numbered among the first to offer her 
his sword.” 

Which also was cheered, but afterwards one man said to 
his neighbor, “The bishop would have shown himself a better 
father, as well as a better bishop, if he had played up a little 
more closely to his boy’s bold lead.” 

XI 

It amused Marcus that his father displayed a readier facility 
than himself with the current coinage, the prevailing idiom, 
and the customs of tfie English. The bishop explained it: 
“You see, I learned all this before I knew anything else; the 
astonishing thing to me is that so much of it pushes up from 
beneath nearly forty years of purely American experiences.” 

The bishop called one day at the Methodist Central Build¬ 
ings in Westminster, where, in addition to a great hall for pub¬ 
lic meetings and Sunday services, are some of the offices of 


SHODDY 


295 


connexional Methodism. Here he met several officers of the 
church. Another day he journeyed eastward to the Missions 
House, and met others. As these gentlemen always are, they 
were most gracious; they have no bishops of their own, but 
are fairly familiar with bishops from America. 

Preaching appointments are not made quite so casually as 
in the United States, but Bishop Bonafede’s contacts with 
these church executives indirectly produced one invitation be¬ 
yond price. The minister of Wesley’s Chapel in the City Road 
invited him to preach in the Cathedral of Methodism. 

That night, as he and Marcus sat in the hotel lounge, he 
spoke of the honor done him in this invitation. He said, “It’s 
more than I deserve. But after all there’s something of ro¬ 
mance in it. Who would have thought, when I left Thornlea, 
that one day I should come back to England and stand in 
John Wesley’s pulpit? Certainly not I, nor any of the people 
I knew when I was a boy going to Sunday School at the old 
hill chapel in Thornlea.” 

To Marcus the mention of Thornlea touched off another set 
of responses. He had been less than keen for his father to 
visit the place, and was ashamed of his reluctance. Now that 
the bishop had no official duties to keep him away, it would 
seem strange if he did not spend a day or two there. 

“Speaking of Thornlea, Dad, I suppose you will take it in 
before you go home?” 

“Why, yes; I had hoped to. I am somewhat surprised that 
you have not run across some of our kindred; they must be 
fairly numerous in and about Thornlea. You’ll go, too, of 
course?” 

“Oh, yes; I couldn’t let you go alone, when there’s a young 
woman I particularly want to introduce to you.” 

The bishop lay awake long after he was in bed; City Road 
was something not to be easily dismissed. And the next day, 
while Marcus was off on some business of the Ministry, he set 
off from the hotel in Holborn towards Fleet Street. Once in the 
Street of Ink, a few judicious inquiries disclosed that the 
Thornlea Recorder still appeared once a week. He thought he 
knew how to word a letter to the Editor, and he was right. 
In the next issue of that steady-going journal appeared a para¬ 
graph of which it must be said that the sub-editor had enlarged, 


296 


SHODDY 


but not unintelligently, on the facts which the bishop had sup¬ 
plied. The paragraph read: 

DISTINGUISHED SON OF THORNLEA 

“We are informed that Bishop Bonafede, of the Methodist 
Church in the U. S. A., who is to preach in Wesley’s Chapel, 
London, on Sunday week, is an old Thornlea boy. Bonafede 
is a familiar name in this part of the West Riding, and our 
older readers may remember Mr. Mark Bonafede, who forty 
years ago was an employing joiner and builder in the town. 
His son, the Bishop, was born here in the late sixties of the 
last century. The family emigrated to America when the future 
bishop was a schoolboy just finishing the sixth standard. By 
his determination and ability, and his devotion to the work of 
the ministry, which he entered a quarter of a century ago, he 
has risen to the highest place in the gift of his church.” 

The Recorder’s tactful reference to the Bonafede name did 
not go unnoticed of the Thornlea Bonafedes. One of them, 
lessee of the Thornlea Arms, and a born organizer, passed the 
word to others, and one of the earliest of the Friday-to-Monday 
cheap trips from Leeds to London, resumed after the war, took 
on new attractiveness to as many of the Bonafede clan as had 
the necessary cash. Yorkshire dearly loves a London excur¬ 
sion, and money beyond the usual was in circulation during the 
first months following the Armistice. 

Said Joe Bonafede, the publican, to his siblings, “Nah then, 
we mun do this business reight. Theer’s a cheeap trip to Lon¬ 
don next Friday, an’ it’s t’ furst chonce we’ve ’ad sin’ t’ war 
began. An’ then theer’s this piece in t’ Recorder abaht Bishop 
Bonafede. He’s uncle or cousin or summat to all on us, an’t’ 
furst Bonafede as Ah knaws on to win a title. Soa Ah’m i’ 
favor of takkin’ advantage o’ this trip an’ then gooin’ to Wes¬ 
ley’s Chapel Sunday mornin’, to hear t’ on’y Bonafede as iwer 
got to be a bishop. It’ll mak’ them London W T esleyans stare, 
when they see soa mony fowk fro’ Yorkshire cum walkin’ in 
an’ they find aht we’re all t’ preycher’s relations. An’t’ bishop 
will be pleeased, as well, or ’e’s noa Bonafede.” 

It was so. City Road was impressed; and so was the Bishop. 

His very ease of utterance, born of perfect familiarity with 
the sermon’s outline and most of the actual words, captured 
the visitors from Thornlea. Sprung from a race voluble enough 


SHODDY 


2 97 


at need, but hampered by large remnants of a dialect which is 
far too much of the street streety for platform or pulpit use, 
they were carried away on the oily wave of the bishop’s flowing 
homiletic diction. 

“ ’E’s a bishop, is yon,” said Joe Bonafede in a hoarse whis¬ 
per to the cousin who sat in the pew beside him; “an’ still it’s 
queer; we can understand ’im as easy as if ’e wor talking just 
to us two, i’ t’ Thornlea Arms snuggery.” 

And the cousin nodded his vigorous assent. 

In the vestry, the minister of City Road thanked and com¬ 
plimented Bishop Bonafede in half a dozen polite common¬ 
places; he could do no less, and he would refrain from more. 

But the clan Bonafede, waiting for its bishop in the open 
space between the chapel and Wesley’s statue, felt no such 
sense of constraint. It had been decorous, as Yorkshire well 
knows how to be, during the service, but when the Bonafede, 
after his brief occultation in the vestry, reappeared with Mar¬ 
cus by his side, all the inhibitions of the sanctuary were loosed, 
and Thornlea took proud possession of its own. 

The worshippers at Wesley’s Chapel are inured to visitors, 
but years of training could not quite repress their amazement 
as they cast discreet sidelong glances at this impromptu Bona¬ 
fede reunion. Some of them heard one of the remoter and less 
urbane of the clan speak the mind of all; “If ony man ’ad 
towd me Ah’d goa to t’ chappil on a trip to London, an’ like 
it, Ah’d thowt ’im silly i’ t’ heead. Bud, lads, it’s trew!” 

Marcus came in for his share of the adulation; he too was 
a Bonafede, and he had been a British soldier. Only with the 
utmost difficulty did father and son win free of their admir¬ 
ing kinsfolk, and not at all until Bartelmy had given his posi¬ 
tive promise that he would see them all when he came to 
Thornlea. 

XII 

Now Thornlea is not all Bonafede, and few of the older 
people of consequence could remember any figure which an¬ 
swered to the Recorder's “Mr. Mark Bonafede, employing 
joiner and builder.” But a bishop, even an American bishop, 
does not appear in those parts every day, and certainly not 
in a Wesleyan chapel. So Bishop Bonafede enjoyed both a 
good press and a good hearing when he came down under 


298 


SHODDY 


Marcus’s guidance to preach in King Street Chapel and visit 
the Jessops. The Bonafedes, naturally in ampler numbers 
than at City Road, turned out to the preaching, and heard an¬ 
other great sermon. At Marcus’s special and, to his father, 
strangely importunate request, the bishop said nothing at all 
about the war, and thus acquired more merit in Thornlea eyes 
than he could ever understand. 

Bartelmy Bonafede recalled, as from some almost forgotten 
old story, innumerable boyhood experiences which the mere 
sight of Thornlea’s half-strange, half-familiar landmarks called 
out of the lumber rooms of memory. But surely there could 
be no real relationship between himself and the boy of these 
grubby and flavorless recollections. 

Just once the feeling left him, that he was gazing after long 
years on the scenery of a play momently rescued from ob¬ 
livion, and he faced a bit of vivid and unmistakeable reality 
of which he could not bring himself to speak. 

Here he was, a guest at Norfolk Lodge, and the daughter 
of the house was his son’s affianced. On several counts it would 
have been less than comfortable to declare himself. And yet 
he could not wholly keep away from the dangerous ground. 

“I remember Norfolk Lodge very well,” he said, on the 
Monday, as they all sat in the library, “Abbey Ridge was a 
sort of third heaven to us who lived below the High Street, 
and I’ve walked past the gate many a time. Often I used 
to wonder how one family could contrive to use all the rooms 
of such a grand house.” 

“It is a grand house,” Marcus put in. “I know, for I’ve 
seen it from cellar to garret. Willie showed me the cellar and 
the garage, and Judith showed me things new and old in the 
garret.” 

“He means, Bishop,” Judith hastened to say, “that it was 
there we found that old paper about the money my grand¬ 
father owed Marcus’s grandfather; nearly two pounds.” 

“And it was there I collected a little on account, without 
any trouble in the world,” added Marcus. 

“You boast too much, young man,” said Judith. “Just for 
that I will see that the next payment is not ready when you 
call for it.” 

Mr. Jessop had not heard the bill story. “As soon as you 
children can be induced to talk intelligibly I should like to 


SHODDY 299 

know what you mean by an old unpaid account. Is there a 
financial skeleton in our garret?” 

Marcus would have taken the blame for a bit of heedless 
prying, but Judith stopped him. 

“There is, daddy; but Marcus had nothing to do with find¬ 
ing it. It was I who suggested looking in the pigeon holes of 
that old secretary, just to see if by chance my Grandfather 
Jessop and Marcus’s Grandfather Bonafede had done any busi¬ 
ness with one another. Marcus picked up a book from the 
shelves and turned his back. But I looked under the letter ‘B’, 
and actually found that old statement of account. It wasn’t 
marked ‘paid’, or ‘settled’, or anything of that sort. So I 
supposed it had never been paid, for some reason or another. 
Marcus saw it only when I showed him his grandfather’s 
name printed across the top, and the amount, one pound seven¬ 
teen and something.” 

“Well,” said Mr. Jessop, “I must see it myself. I’d like to 
know why my father never settled such an account, if he 
didn’t; though I know that at times he was a hard man to 
deal with. I suppose, speaking strictly, I should pay it to you, 
Bishop, with interest for these thirty-odd years. You and I 
are our fathers’ heirs, I take it?” 

“Please, no; daddy,” interposed Judith; “even though the 
bishop would accept it, and he wouldn’t, don’t you both think 
that Marcus and I have found a better way? Every time I 
let him kiss me—see, he’s blushing about it again—I pay 
something on the Jessop debt to the Bonafedes, though we 
never agree how much.” 

Blushes did not prevent Marcus from talking. “It’s the 
finest debt I ever heard of,” he said. “Every payment is 
worth more than enough to wipe out the total, interest and 
all; and yet there’s always a chance to collect another instal¬ 
ment—if I’m good,” he hastily added, as Judith gave him a 
warning frown. 

“I’ll show you all exactly where we found it,” Judith offered. 
“You may as well see the whole house, while we are about it.” 
She rose, Willie and Marcus offering their arms, which she 
waved away. “Let’s start with the kitchen, and work up. 
You too, daddy; it’s your house. Mother can stay here. She 
hates stairs.” 


300 


SHODDY 


And she led the way downstairs to a room which Bartelmy 
Bonafede felt certain he would recognize at sight. 

As he did; he would have known it in a picture, or even 
from a description. Once at that table a boy had sat and 
waited, hungrily. The chair might have been the identical 
chair. The wall still held its battery of shining brass and cop¬ 
per. The very domestic who, as they entered, rose from her 
seat by the range, might have been the kindly cook of that 
elder day, magically preserved against time and change. 

“Well,” said Judith the guide, “what do you think of this 
English kitchen? Marcus has told me of your wonderful white 
kitchens in America, with their what-do-you-call ’ems for the 
food—oh, yes, I know—refrigerators, and their cabinets and 
electric ranges and all the labor-saving devices Americans seem 
to invent so easily. But I like our kitchen, too. Don’t you?” 

And Bartelmy Bonafede, at once boy and man, said, “To 
me it will always be the most wonderful kitchen in the world.” 

“Flatterer,” smiled Judith, guessing nothing. “But you de¬ 
serve something for doing it so nicely. It’s an hour before 
lunch. What would you like, out of our old kitchen? See if 
you can ask for something to eat—English, of course—that it 
can’t supply.” 

Bartelmy Bonafede’s heart thumped against his ribs, and 
he knew why. But there was a strange zest in it. 

“If you don’t mind,” he said, with a nervous little bow, 
“I won’t ask for anything unusual. I’d like a piece of bread 
and butter, with some Scotch marmalade spread on top of the 
butter.” 

Mr. Jessop roared. When he could speak, he said, “Just the 
thing I used to ask for when I was a lad. What a luxury! And 
I like it yet. Let’s all have some.” 

Bishop Bonafede watched the servant cut the bread and 
spread it. He saw her take down the white jar of Dundee 
marmalade. As he took his doubled half-slice he said, to no¬ 
body in particular, “I remember a night when a piece like this 
was all I had for supper, and my two brothers had the other 
half for breakfast.” 

Then the little procession followed Judith upstairs, and did 
not stop until everything had been seen, including the garret 
and the old desk with its filed-away stories of business transac- 


SHODDY 301 

tions in a Thornlea that had vanished from the thought of 
men. 

XIII 

By a sort of tacit agreement, Bishop Bonafede and the 
Jessops had said nothing about the children’s engagement, but 
Tuesday night came, and on the morrow the bishop would be 
leaving for a few days in Scotland before taking ship for 
home. No longer could the subject be kept from intruding it¬ 
self into the foreground of their thoughts. 

Mrs. Jessop broached it, as the three sat about the fire after 
Tuesday’s dinner. Marcus and Judith were off at a party of 
some sort, Marcus having been joyously accepted by the 
Abbey Ridge younger set. 

.“You may think me just a foolish mother, Bishop, and 
selfish beside,” she began, “but I can’t help wondering about 
our Judy. Marcus is a joy; you and Mrs. Bonafede have 
brought him up well. And I’m sure we’ve nothing to say 
against the engagement, but—” she faltered, and could go no 
further. 

“What mother means,” said Mr. Jessop, coming to the res¬ 
cue, “is that this is a rather serious business for us. We know 
nothing of Marcus’s plans, or even of his prospects. He’ll 
make his way, I don’t doubt, but to us the question is—where? 
You see,” as the bishop showed signs of mild surprise, “we 
don’t say much, being no harder hit than a million others, but 
ours is already a home with its empty room and its always 
present sense of loss. Of course, even if Marcus should take 
Judy to America, we shan’t really have lost her; but for old 
folk like us America is a long way off.” 

The pity of it touched Bartelmy. It made him feel like 
Bartelmy, not like a bishop. “I know,” he said softly. “It 
used to seem far away for young folk, too, I remember. But 
now it’s not anything like so remote. Besides, I’m not at all 
sure about Marcus settling down in the States just yet. He 
tells me he has had two offers lately, growing out of his news¬ 
paper work. One is a chance on one of the two American 
papers which publish a Paris edition, and the other proposes 
a year in European capitals, as a sort of traveling reporter for 
a Philadelphia paper. You know he has made not such a bad 
start, for a youngster, and the papers seem to like his ‘stuff,’ 


302 


SHODDY 


as he calls it; though at times it’s a trifle radical for my taste. 
What I’m getting at is that Marcus will soon be making a 
living, and, probably, for the present, doing most of his work 
on this side of the Atlantic.” 

Mrs. Jessop looked the relief she felt. “I was afraid he 
would ask to take our girl far away from us all of a sudden; 
and yet neither of us wanted to seem unreasonable.” 

“I’ll tell you what, Bishop,” said Mr. Jessop, “the young 
man and I have managed to endure one another, and you 
and Judy hit it off famously. Let’s ask the youngsters, in the 
morning, what their intentions are. My prospective father-in- 
law once did just that, and gave me a bad quarter of an hour; 
and I understand in these days that it’s necessary to question 
the young woman as well as the young man.” 

At breakfast the ordeal was attempted. Willie tactfully ef¬ 
faced himself, well knowing what was toward. Marcus and 
he had had no secrets, from the day they had come to Nor¬ 
folk Lodge on leave. 

“Of course, we shall settle down in America at last,” Judith 
announced, “but if Marcus takes one of the places he’s been 
offered, we shall be running in on you here so often in the 
next year or two you’ll think us a nuisance; won’t they— 
honey?” She was proud of her ability to bring in that word, 
caught from Marcus in almost her first lesson in American 
love-making. 

“Seems to me I’m that sort of a nuisance already,” said the 
boy. “But honestly, I feel like a burglar, to hold you up this 
way for all the girl you’ve got. Still, the wonder is that no¬ 
body beat me to it, and I’d rather not take any chances. If 
we promise to come home as often as every time I can get 
away, will that do? And maybe I can get a real job, after a 
while, that will call for commuting between London and New 
York. It’s being done, you know.” 

The Jessops smiled over his bold humility and his whimsies. 
Mrs. Jessop, first to think of her own home and its longings, 
was first also to turn their thoughts to another aspect of the 
case. “There’s your own mother, Marcus. We’ve been acting 
as if she had no claim on you. Here you’ve been away from 
home three years—and in the war. I know what she has gone 
through. You must get back to her as soon as you can.” 

Neither Marcus nor his father would confess it by so much 


SHODDY 


303 


as a look, but they felt that Mrs. Jessop was rebuking them, 
and rightly. For they had not thought at all of taking Viola 
into consideration. Perhaps because she had always been so 
self-sufficient. Perhaps because for years they had known no 
such home life as that which here at Norfolk Lodge seemed 
so natural and so gracious. 

Once more Mr. Jessop came to the rescue. “It just occurs 
to me that you children are much too young to think of marry¬ 
ing. Why not wait a year or two?” 

Judith slipped around to the back of his chair and pulled 
both of his ears. “You were a venerable old gentleman of 
twenty-two yourself when you and the mater set up on your 
own, I’ve heard.” 

“You’ve heard a lot of rubbish, my dear,” her father re¬ 
plied, drawing her to him and taking her on his knee. But 
his rejoinder lacked conviction. “There were circumstances—” 

“Yes, I know,” said Judith, “I’ve heard that, too. Circum¬ 
stances were part of the game then, just as they are now. 
Don’t you know we’ve got circumstances?” 

“Then I’ll tell you what,” said Mr. Jessop, retreating at dis¬ 
cretion and falling back on his favorite conversational open¬ 
ing, “I’ll tell you what. Marcus, when you accept whichever 
post you think is the right one, put in a stipulation that you’re 
to have a holiday before they take you on. Then mother and 
I will give you, as a wedding present, a brief honeymoon in 
that strange country, America, won’t we, Mother? That will 
make it possible for you to see your mother, and to present 
your bride to her for approval. And confusion to all Income 
Tax offices!” 

“Oh, Daddy!” from Judith. 

And Marcus spoke, impulsively, “You are the kindest and 
most generous people I know. It’s wonderful. But may I take 
advantage of you once more?” For a sudden eagerness had 
taken hold of him. “I’ll tell you what. If that’s the program, 
why not have Dad drop in on his way back from Scotland, 
and let’s get it over with? I’ve no idea I can dictate terms 
when I go to see about a job; they won’t hold the thing open 
long just because I want to get married. But they might be 
reasonable. So, you see, there’s every excuse for as much 
haste as your English law about weddings will allow.” 

“So it seems,” said Mr. Jessop soberly. Things were moving 


304 


SHODDY 


a bit faster than he had bargained for. “Still, why not? The 
sooner you’re off to America, the sooner you’ll be back. What 
do you think, Mother?” 

Mrs. Jessop, happy in the thought that Judith would most 
likely be within reach for at least the better part of a year, 
thought it an admirable plan. Mothers learn to accept such 
things and appear grateful. 


XIV 

The wedding took place three weeks later, with Bishop Bona- 
fede and the Chairman of the Leeds District of the Wesleyan 
Methodist Church sharing in the ceremony. For plenty of 
reasons it was as private as an English wedding can be, with 
no guests; Jane Depledge did what bridesmaids are supposed 
to do, and Willie Jessop gave Marcus his moral support. 

The bishop had urged Marcus to reserve passage on some 
liner other than the Aquitania, on which he was returning. 
“You won’t want to have me always in the offing; the trip is 
your wedding present, and unless Judith is a poor sailor the 
Atlantic crossing is ideal for brides and grooms. If you hap¬ 
pen to meet other newly-weds, all right; they’ll be company 
enough. If not, you won’t need me, anyway. So I’ll go on 
ahead.” 

Marcus had tried to tell his mother that Judith was not just 
somebody to be endured, and even her husband had waxed 
enthusiastic over their new daughter-in-law; but Viola was in 
no wise prepared for the girl’s radiant loveliness. What poor 
photographers they must have in England! 

This winsome creature, all rose and gold and light, who 
knew enough not to monopolize her young husband when his 
mother wanted him, and who so matter-of-factly deferred to 
the older woman in everything, stirred in Viola feelings she 
had not known for years. 

After Judith had taken herself out of the way two or three 
times, so that Marcus and his mother could be together, Viola 
protested. 

“My dear, he’s as much yours as mine; more, really. And 
I think I should enjoy him better if you were with us.” Just 
why she wanted to make a confidante of Judith she did not 
exactly know, but there was something quieting in it. “I think 


SHODDY 


305 


we Bonafedes have made one great mistake. We have not 
cared much for each other’s interests. It’s too late for me to 
care about my husband’s work. I never could. And he has 
had no time to spare for my friends or my pursuits. But I 
think I could begin all over again with you. When you come 
to America for good, won’t you let me try?” 

Which quite melted Judith. Her own home life had been so 
natural a companionship, with only Howard’s loss in these 
last years to break into its perfect community of understanding. 

“But you’ve got Marcus,” she said, “and of course you 
know that Bishop Bonafede’s work is after all very important. 
Until he went to war, you had Marcus all the time. You had 
the joy of his growing years.” 

Viola was not ready, yet, to confess to this ardent and af¬ 
fectionate young stranger how she had been rather glad that 
Marcus, as a little child, could be content with his own com¬ 
pany, and how all through his boyhood he had depended on 
others far more than on his mother. 

So she merely said, “Yes, I’ve had Marcus. But when he 
left me he was a schoolboy. Now he’s a man, a soldier, and a 
husband, all at once. He has his work and his wife. He doesn’t 
need me any longer. But I’m thinking I must have somebody. 
Promise me, Judith, that when you come back I can take a 
little corner in your life for my own. Nobody could help lov¬ 
ing you, and I’m not going to try. And I think you’ll help me 
keep in touch with my boy.” The desire to keep in touch with 
Marcus was itself a new thing, which Viola herself could not 
explain. 

And Judith, not in the least guessing what strange, futile 
longings were back of Viola’s asking, said, “The place you 
ask for is yours now, Mother dear. And I’ll take a corner of 
your heart, shan’t I? We wouldn’t think of anything else 
than being as near to you and the bishop as we possibly can. 
Marcus tells me you go with father on some of his official 
journeys, so we must settle down somewhere near his lines of 
travel when we come back to stay. This is such a big country! ” 


CHAPTER IX 


I 

Rhoda was graduating. How she had managed her courses, 
first through the Foundation’s early struggles, then through 
the crowded war months, and at last through the orderly con¬ 
fusion of building operations while Leyton Center was going 
up she never knew. But here it was, almost Commencement. 
The Center would be dedicated a few days before the Com¬ 
mencement exercises, and then, all at once she would be out of 
college, out of the war-time hut of the Fellowship, and—worst 
of all, out of the Fellowship itself, just when it was coming 
into its great inheritance. For she had decided that when 
she graduated it would be time to go out and earn her daily 
bread. 

After she had cried herself to sleep a few nights she took 
counsel of her good sense. What was the use of lamenting 
the very results for which you had worked your head off? 
Hadn’t she wanted to be a Tech woman? Hadn’t she prayed 
and worked and contrived in a thousand ways through the 
four years touching anything that concerned the Fellowship? 
And here she was, in sight of her degree, with Leyton Center 
promising to be the finest thing of its kind west of the Hud¬ 
son. What was there to cry about? It had all happened as 
she had wanted it to happen. 

Still she was not at peace. What to do, after Commence¬ 
ment? Next year? How did girls out of Tech make a living? 
Some sort of teaching, most likely. She had lived so close to 
this work of her father’s, and had been so held in the grip of 
its day-by-day activities, that there had been little chance and 
less incentive to think of the future. But now—? 

Aaron Leyton and Peter Middleton had been quite as com¬ 
pletely preoccupied as Rhoda. It was not strange that they 
came to a realizing sense of the same problem at about the 
same time. 

“Middleton,” said the old man as they checked up on al- 
306 


SHODDY 307 

most the last of the construction reports, “this building is 
going to be used to its full capacity the day it’s open.” 

“I know that,” said Peter. “You have done far more than 
you first planned, but at least you’ll have the satisfaction of 
knowing from the start that our Methodist boys and girls at 
Tech will get a hundred cents worth of use out of every dollar 
you’ve put in.” 

“And what more could I want?” asked the old man. 

Then he turned to other matters. “You’ve got your teaching 
staff arranged for, haven’t you?” 

“Yes; two men, one for Biblical work and one for religious 
education, psychology and all that field. But that’s all, though 
we could give more courses that would earn Tech credit if we 
could put on a bigger staff. Mind you, I’m not asking any¬ 
thing more from you. I wouldn’t take it. This thing has to 
be supported by the church, or it will fail in some of its most 
important uses. The money will come, I believe; but just now 
there isn’t enough in sight for more than the two men. I’ll 
take some classes, of course, and we can count on student 
help for most of the regular chores of the place. The one 
thing that still really bothers me is a woman.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“Well; it’s the thing that Rhoda has been almost doing. 
She is so wrapped up in the Fellowship that often it has come 
before her school work. And though we have saved what her 
work would have cost, she has shown me that we must have 
a woman here to act as a sort of dean. Nearly half of our 
student members are girls and women. We shall have three 
men on the staff, but nobody to start in where Rhoda leaves 
off. And you know she’s graduating this year.” 

“Does that mean she’s leaving you?” 

“Only in the sense that she wants to earn her living, or 
find out she can’t. Which is a joke, of course. She has said 
something about teaching; not much. We’ve tried to talk 
things over, but you know how life is in the hut. She says 
she wants to take a year at Columbia or somewhere.” 

“And you think you should have somebody for full-time 
work of the sort she has done?” 

“We must, simply must. It’s more important than any 
other one piece of the work we have to do. If Rhoda only felt 
that she could stay— But I don’t blame her. In fact, I want 


308 


SHODDY 


her to get away. She has never been out of my sight, and 
that’s not the way to treat a girl of her age. I want her to 
have some broader contacts than even Tech and the Fellow¬ 
ship can give her.” 

“Naturally. We feel the same about our Marie, and she’s 
off to Columbia for summer school, a few days after com¬ 
mencement. I’ll tell you what. It’s probably easier for me to 
turn over a little more oil money than to go out and ask other 
people for it, but I see your point about the church needing 
to take this Tech responsibility more seriously. So, if I’ll 
promise not to make any subscriptions myself, are you willing 
that I should try to raise enough for your dean of women?” 

Peter could see no objection to that, especially as he had 
never known how to raise money himself, and the churches 
were always being assiduously cultivated by representatives of 
other worthy causes. 

“Then,” said Mr. Leyton, “since that’s settled, what about 
you and me giving Rhoda her year in New York right away? 
You can make shift to do with student management for a 
while, until we see whether I am any good as a money raiser. 
And you put too much of your own salary into the Fellow¬ 
ship to have much left for a post-graduate’s expenses.” 

“That’s like you, Brother Leyton,” said Peter, “but it isn’t 
necessary. As it happens, my father left a fund for Rhoda’s 
education, and by now it is more than ample. It hasn’t been 
touched yet. I know you’ll leave me this pleasure of seeing 
my girl spend what her grandfather gave her when she was a 
little child.” 

“I will that,” said the old man, “and I apologize for even 
suggesting anything else. It just shows what a snare money 
can be. A man gets to thinking that nothing else matters, 
because it’s so easy for him to say, ‘Never mind about where 
the money’s to come from; I’ll take care of that.’ And I begin 
to see how really selfish that sort of thing is.” 

Peter did find time for talking things out with Rhoda, by 
dint of carrying her off with him for an afternoon on the river; 
and everything was settled, so that within the month Rhoda 
and Marie were in a two-room-and-bath affair just around the 
Broadway corner of Union Seminary, and all Columbia, with 
its bewildering multiplicity of courses, was before them. 


SHODDY 


309 


But Peter was not the only one who had taken Rhoda off 
for private conversations. Aaron Leyton wanted an effective 
argument for his financial efforts, and thought he knew where 
to find it. 

When he had told Peter’s daughter of what he was think¬ 
ing, she sat silent for a moment or two. 

“Then the idea doesn’t appeal to you?” the old gentleman 
said, and he could not help showing his disappointment. 

“Oh, Mr. Leyton,” Rhoda cried out, “you make me so happy 
I don’t know what to say. If I could only take time out to 
cry a bit, I could talk to you like a sensible girl. And I think 
your idea is the finest in the world. If only I could 1” 

“Well, isn’t that one thing you’ll be finding out at Colum¬ 
bia? You’ll have all this summer and a full regular year to 
get ready.” 

“You mean that I could take some courses and special work 
that would fit me for it?” 

“What’s a post-graduate school for, if not that? But re¬ 
member; not a word to Brother Middleton. This is a plot, 
and he is queer about plots. You have nothing to do now ex¬ 
cept to tell me that you think well of the idea. Do you?” 

“Mr. Leyton,” said the girl with quiet intensity, “this is 
how well I think of it. My mother died when I was born. She 
must have been a wonderful woman; not only from what 
father has told me but from what I’ve heard others say. And 
just before she died she said that if she could think her baby 
might some day take her place and do the sort of work she 
had hoped to do, alongside Peter Middleton, she would not 
be so sorry to go. Of course she did not guess what sort of 
work father would be doing when I grew up, but can you 
think of anything more beautiful than what you are pro¬ 
posing?” 

“Nothing except that you might have such a home of your 
own as she had begun to make. That’s your first right, I think, 
though I know it’s an old-fashioned opinion.” 

“I know. And I’m not modern enough to deny it. If it 
comes—the chance, I mean—it will come, that’s all. But if it 
doesn’t, and so far it hasn’t, you know now what I think about 
your idea. I shall be thinking about it every day until I come 
home again.” 


310 


SHODDY 


n 

The dedication of Leyton Center brought to Great Meadows 
a company of Methodist notables. 

Bishop Bonafede was there because it was under his admin¬ 
istration of the Board of Special Philanthropies that the Ox¬ 
ford Fellowship had been established at Tech. Bishop Ran¬ 
dolph came by virtue of being in charge of the Area. Bishop 
Eberle took his place among the trustees of the Fellowship, 
who were present in force, with perhaps a hundred ministers 
from the conferences of the region. 

The president of Tech was a willing participant, being an en¬ 
thusiastic believer in the Fellowship’s underlying idea. Every 
church which established a work like the Fellowship made a 
priceless contribution to the school; discipline was easier, stu¬ 
dent life was more wholesome, and those religious activities 
were provided which the state cannot carry on. 

The general crowd included the students connected with the 
Fellowship, and many parents, whose presence their children 
had secured by those arts of domestic compulsion familiar to 
the family freshman. Certainly most of the parents had needed 
little urging; they had heard so much about the Oxford Fellow¬ 
ship and Leyton Center and Peter Middleton and Rhoda that 
curiosity alone would have brought many of them. 

Of all the people associated with the beginnings of things in 
the Fellowship one was absent, and it is not likely that many 
thought of him. But Rhoda Middleton did; if only Marcus 
could have been present she would have nothing more to ask 
of Providence. 

The Center, for a wonder, was finished. The last truck load 
of miscellaneous debris had gone out of the alley the night be¬ 
fore. Everything was very new, certainly, and smelled rawly 
of plaster and varnish; but, to the last hook in the cloak rooms, 
it was ready. 

The unofficial visitors included an elderly man from Kansas, 
the unexpected but welcome guest of a Tech professor. Dr. 
Dailey had known Colonel Burlington as a fellow-delegate at 
the General Conference which had elected Bartelmy Bonafede 
to the espiscopacy, and they had kept up the acquaintance by 
desultory correspondence. 

“I’m glad,” the Colonel had said when he dropped in unan- 


SHODDY 


311 


nounced at the Dailey home, “that I could get away in time for 
this affair. I’m off to New York and Europe for a little holi¬ 
day, and this is right on my way.” 

Dr. Dailey said, “So? I’m for Europe myself next week. 
What’s your ship? We may bump into each other on London 
Bridge.” Which thing they did—almost. He made his friend 
free of the house. When they were settled on the porch, he 
wanted to know why Colonel Burlington had such a deep in¬ 
terest in the dedication of Leyton Center. 

“Well,” the Colonel said, “as you know, I’m interested in 
Bonafede, and not only from the time we helped make him 
bishop, either. Twenty years ago he and your man Middleton 
of this Oxford Fellowship were pastors together in Parkerville, 
where I’ve lived these thirty years and more. Bonafede was 
my pastor, as I think I’ve told you before, and Middleton was 
in the east side church. I had something to do with getting 
Middleton kicked upstairs; he was stirring things up too much 
in Parkerville.” 

Professor Dailey, from his chair of History in Tech, was one 
of Peter’s strongest supporters in the faculty. So he wanted to 
know what the Colonel meant. 

“Oh, he was a sort of disturbing influence among the factory 
workers; talked a lot of stuff which is ordinary enough now, 
but then it sounded almost revolutionary to some of our more 
nervous capitalists. It didn’t fit in with my ideas, either. We 
were facing a possible strike in the glass works. So I went to 
the bishop and got him promoted. He was sent to a college 
town, and I reckon that’s where he began learning the rudi¬ 
ments of the job he has now.” 

“And you seem to like him, in spite of what you did to him.” 

“Always have. I never had any trouble in liking Peter 
Middleton. I took a fancy to him at our first interview, even 
though I did put the skids under him. He had hold of some 
good ideas. But he was impractical then, as I told him; and I 
suppose he is yet. His kind is pretty stubborn. He is having 
his little day of glory today, but when the shouting’s over, look 
what he’s up against. Grubbing away here with a lot of stu¬ 
dents who come and go. Lie can’t ever build up a church; the 
best stuff he gets hold of goes out in four years or less. It’s 
hard labor for life, if he doesn’t quit soon. He may be con¬ 
tent to have it so, but, so far as his career goes, I tell you he’s 


t 


312 


SHODDY 


shot his wad. No big church will want him, after he’s been 
here another three or four years. 

“But Bonafede, now; there’s the boy for you. I’ve watched 
him all through the years. He never so far commits himself to 
anything that he can’t back out if he has to; and so he never 
gets where he has to make a false move. I’ll bet he had his 
eye on the episcopacy before he left college. And he went 
straight to it. Married right. Got his wife’s father back of 
him; and old Judge Dimont was as smooth as they make ’em. 

“See what Bonafede did with the Board of Special Philan¬ 
thropies. Since he was made bishop the Board’s not half what 
it was when he had it. And he knew it wouldn’t be. Got from 
under just in time. But he did good work and made no enemies. 
When he was elected bishop he was cashing in on twenty years 
of effort and planning and study of the whole works. It was 
almost a dead certainty from the start that he’d be bishop in 
time; he went to it like a homing pigeon.” 

“Do you know his son?” Dr. Dailey asked, just to stem the 
tide for a moment. “The boy has made something of a name 
for himself in the papers since the war.” 

“No; I don’t know him. He was a baby when the Bona- 
fede’s came to Parkerville. I’ve heard about him, and read 
some of his stuff in the Outlook and the church papers. He seems 
a bright enough boy, but probably he doesn’t know yet what 
he’s really after. He’ll need to take lessons from his father. 
For, if you ask me,”—the Colonel was off again—“Bartelmy 
Bonafede’s my sort of man. When he found himself in the 
church, he began studying it, and learning how to operate its 
machinery. Lots of men do that, of course, in a way, but Bona¬ 
fede did it systematically and scientifically. He made oppor¬ 
tunities out of what other men thought were hindrances. That’& 
the trick, wherever you are.” 

“But, Colonel,” objected the professor, “don’t you think such 
scheming, if it was scheming, is unworthy of a minister? Isn’t 
the ministry supposed to be above that sort of thing?” 

“Nobody’s above it, Dailey. Bonafede would have gone the 
same way about it if he had taken up law, or politics, or busi¬ 
ness. There’s just one method, in the church as well as out of 
it. You learn how to work with the machine, and not to buck 
it. I know a minister is expected to be unselfish. But tell me 
—you’ve been in General Conference—why did we Methodists 


SHODDY 


313 


build and set going a system like ours if we believed ministers 
should keep from putting their ambitions and hopes on it? It’s 
all they’ve got. You and I get our rewards elsewhere, but when 
we set up great prizes for the preachers to look at, why be sur¬ 
prised when they begin to hanker after them? Besides, we 
can’t object if a man succeeds so well in the jobs the church 
gives him that he’s always right in line for the next plum. 
Otherwise we’d be putting our biggest failures into the places of 
leadership. Would that look like business, even in the church?’’ 

“But what about Peter Middleton, then? Isn’t he a suc¬ 
cess?” 

“Oh, yes; sort of. tie was a success at Parkerville. But he 
was bucking the machine. So he had to go. He bucked the 
machine some at Iliopolis, I’ve heard, and they pitchforked him 
into this job, with just about nothing to live on.” 

“Yes,” said Dailey; “and he’s succeeded here so much that 
you and a lot of other important people have come to hear 
tributes to him and his work.” 

“I know; and you’re right, up to a point. Middleton suc¬ 
ceeds, as I said. But not like Bonafede. I’m not saying I’m 
sorry for-Middleton. He probably enjoys the life he’s had, and 
I’m dead sure he couldn’t play Bonafede’s game. But my con¬ 
tention is, if you’re after a real success, that is, to get to the top 
in your line, whatever it is, you’ve got to take the thing as it is 
and play your game according to the rules that were made long 
before you sat in. Bonafede’s done that. Middleton can’t, or 
won’t. And so Bonafede’s a bishop; and Middleton, as I said 
before, has a sentence to hard labor for life, with once in a 
while a day off, like today. Well, I’ve talked a lot of What you 
may think is rot, and now it’s time to go to the performance. 
We can agree in enjoying that, I guess. And we must look one 
another up in London.” 

It was a day to be remembered by the whole Tech contin¬ 
gent. Each of the men on the program spoke after his own 
fashion, but all must perforce make much of the Oxford Fellow¬ 
ship and the Leyton Center, and that could not be easily done 
without some reference to Peter Middleton. Which gave the 
students frequent excuse for blowing off steam. 

Dr. Andrews, the president of Tech, was most felicitous in 
his remarks of congratulation, and in his approval of the Fel¬ 
lowship idea. 


314 


SHODDY 


Bishop Bonafede recalled the days when he was a college 
student, harking back to his associations with Peter at Calder 
College. “Indeed,” he said, “our friendship goes further back 
than that, for Brother Middleton’s home was my first and 
almost my only home in Kansas until I was married and had a 
home of my own. 

“I am proud of being here today, and of seeing what we see, 
because it was with a small fund, much too small, from the 
Board of Special Philanthropies, of which at the time I was 
Executive Secretary, that this work was begun. And Peter 
Middleton was just the man to begin it.” (Cheers.) “In this con¬ 
nection I should like to call your attention to the fact that it is 
from such modest beginnings we can trace many of our greatest 
Methodist institutions and enterprises,—hospitals, colleges, or¬ 
phanages, theological schools, schools and other work for 
Negroes, and many other activities. These, so modestly begun, 
so wonderfully developed, are part of the church’s answer to 
the plea sometimes heard that the chief business of the church 
is to preach the gospel, and leave the concrete application of its 
spirit and principles to other agencies.” (Mild cheers.) 

Bishop Eberle was likewise in a reminiscent mood. “I, too, 
had something to do,” he began, “with my friend Middleton’s 
start. T knew him when’.” And he told the story of the Blue 
Oak revival. 

“The need of such foundations as the Oxford Fellowship 
needs no arguing,” he went on, “but what is not felt so strongly 
as it should be is that for every such a foundation there must 
be a man. Peter Middleton was getting ready for this at Cal¬ 
der, twenty-five years ago. Without him, and, I know you will 
want me to add, without his talented and self-forgetful daugh¬ 
ter,” (loud cheers from the student section) “no amount of 
theorizing about the need, and in fact, no amount of available 
money, would have brought us to this day and this admirably 
planned Center. We must all acknowledge the great and wise 
generosity of Brother Leyton,” (cheers), “and yet I may be vio¬ 
lating a confidence when I say that it was his knowledge of the 
Middletons which made him sure that his money would be 
wisely invested in the building we have come to dedicate. 

“And our most urgent task now is to find and train many men 
like Peter Middleton.” (More cheers.) “For such institutions 
as this Oxford Fellowship are every day more desperately need- 


SHODDY 


315 


ed, as Methodist students crowd into the schools established by 
the state and supported by our taxes. 

“We cannot either abandon or grow lukewarm toward our 
church’s colleges. But everybody sees that the modern ten¬ 
dency is for the public to seek as much as possible of its gen¬ 
eral education in the great public institutions. And so, even 
if we had not a single Methodist student in them, the genius of 
Methodism would send us to these thronging thousands. All 
the more is the church bound to follow its own children, and 
not to leave them to the tender mercies of a wholly secularized 
education.” 

This was the note to strike. The other men had been heard 
politely and with a measure of interest, but, except for a few 
among the official visitors, everybody knew that Bishop Eberle 
had gone to the root of the matter. 

Rhoda they captured from her place in the audience, put her 
into a chair which was swung up to the muscular shoulders of 
four young men. The leaders stormed the platform, and cap¬ 
tured Peter lifting him to their shoulders alongside his daugh¬ 
ter. Then the procession got fairly under way, with rhythmic 
trampings, the Tech yell and other noisy ritual, until the room 
had been circled thrice. With Rhoda back in her place, and 
Peter dropped again into his chair on the platform, the students 
felt they had properly shown their feelings, and the program re¬ 
verted to its formal aspect. 

Half an hour later the dedication ceremony, as all agreed, 
had been well and truly done. 

hi 

The morning papers of a June Monday of that year carried 
an Associated Press story with a Calder College dateline of the 
day before. It ran, “Bishop Bartelmy Bonafede of Salt Lake 
City, one of the best known Methodist ecclesiastics in the coun¬ 
try, collapsed today while preaching the baccalaureate sermon 
at Calder College, of which he is an alumnus. An old friend, 
the Rev. Peter Middleton, happened to be seated near the 
bishop, and caught him as he fell. He was carried to the Presi¬ 
dent’s house, where in about an hour he regained consciousness. 
Late in the afternoon he was able to receive a few callers, and 
assured them that his indisposition had no significance except 
as an indication of recent overwork. His friends urged him to 


316 


SHODDY 


cancel his immediate engagements, but he insisted on leaving 
by the evening train for a series of dates in the East.” 

The Associated Press correspondent told the truth, so far as 
it was known by the authorities at Calder. One man guessed 
the rest of it; but his lips were sealed. 

Bishop Bonafede had gone to Calder direct from the 
dedication of Leyton Center. He had been invited, as a son of 
the college, to preach the baccalaureate sermon. As it chanced, 
he had never performed that function at Calder before, though, 
naturally, he had often spoken from the familiar platform. 

By way of recognizing the event suitably, he had determined 
to produce a new discourse. Like most of the bishops, he was 
used to more or less mild jests at his repetitiousness, though it 
would be foolish to say that he or the others enjoyed them. For 
any bishop knows that the jesters would do no better them¬ 
selves, if they had no more than a bishop’s leisure for study. 

Since it was his college, and this far from his first appearance 
there, something self-regardful was in his inclination to offer 
new material. On the Calder platform he had never quite over¬ 
come a feeling of being entirely too well understood. Elsewhere 
he could be assured—mastery in each pose and movement—be¬ 
fore he had spoken a word. But always at Calder the years 
somehow dropped away, as he recalled the just but merciless 
student judgment, intolerant to pretense, swift to detect rant 
and cant, vocally scornful of the first patronizing word. 

A new sermon it should be, then. Very well; but what? 

It was not the least part of his dismay, after the event, that 
now he saw himself almost incapable of what his old rhetoric 
texts had called “invention.” This had not occurred to him 
when casting about for his sermon idea, though he could see it 
with revealing clearness when it was too late. 

Searching for something of a lead, his thoughts had gone 
back, understandably enough, to the platform at Calder as he 
best remembered it, the Calder of his undergraduate days. 
From that far-away time he dimly recalled one baccalaureate 
sermon which had made something of an impression on him. 
The preacher, long since lost track of, had seemed in that day 
the embodiment of all a great preacher should be. 

The detail of the sermon he had almost wholly forgotten. 
What he remembered was that the preacher had gone to an un¬ 
familiar part of the Old Testament for his text, and that the 


SHODDY 


317 


story back of it had seemed most dramatic. It was the story 
of the siege of Samaria, and the consequent famine in the city. 
The text of that other preacher had been “Tomorrow about 
this time,” and the discourse, as Bishop Bonafede imperfectly 
and inaccurately recalled it, told the seniors of its day, with 
rather more confidence than the outcome had justified, that 
somehow in the tomorrow they were facing they might be bring¬ 
ing help and deliverance to a hungry world. 

For very good reasons Bishop Bonafede could not use that 
text. It was easily possible that some one of his own generation 
would remember the former time. So he had gone into the con¬ 
text, to see if the story might offer some other arresting phrase, 
and the search brought to light just what he was looking for, in 
Elisha’s paradoxical prediction to the captain on whose arm the 
king leaned: “Thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt 
not eat thereof.” 

The story, as Bible readers know, is almost perfect drama. 
A foodless city, a helpless king, a cynical soldier, an unpopular 
prophet, hunger-crazed women, public-spirited lepers, a panic- 
smitten enemy, sudden plenty after the extremity of famine, 
an unbeliever’s death in the moment of his pride and power. 

One might wonder how a man of Bishop Bonafede’s discern¬ 
ment had been attracted by this passage and its grim ending. 
But he saw in it not a little of vivid and attention-gripping 
quality, and to the bishop it was second nature to look for and 
use in his speeches what he had once described to Peter Middle- 
ton, in a borrowed phrase, as “justifiable quiddities.” Well, 
why not? 

What was far stranger to him afterwards, as he reviewed the 
whole affair, was his complete blindness to the theme’s deadly 
personal implications. Not once, in the fragments of time he 
had been able to give to the sermon’s preparation, had he 
dreamed that it was possible to turn on himself and say, “Thou 
art the man.” 

In retrospect such obtuseness seemed to him incredible. But 
few preachers see all around their themes. He had been think¬ 
ing to focus his sermon on the incompleteness of even the full¬ 
est lives; Moses missing Canaan; Wolfe at Quebec; Nelson at 
Trafalgar; Lincoln struck down in Ford’s Theater; DeLesseps 
beaten at Panama; Roosevelt denied command of a division in 
the Great War; Leonard Wood kept back from leading the offi- 


318 SHODDY 

cers he had trained. History, ancient and modern, was full of 
examples. 

And all the time he did not in the least suspect that his own 
best illustration was himself; the life-fabric he had been weav¬ 
ing, thread by thread, all through the years since he had 
listened to that other preacher talk of Elisha and the Syrians 
and the lepers. Even the few significant comments of Peter, 
the evening before, had no meaning to him until it was all over. 

The bishop and Peter, having come from Great Meadows by 
diverse routes, had met at a little informal dinner on Saturday 
night. Peter was on hand for the twenty-fifth anniversary of 
his class. 

After dinner they found themselves in a corner alone. As 
always, they talked briefly, but quite as old intimates. Bona- 
fede had never been able to carry himself episcopally in the 
infrequent meetings with Peter since his election; nor did Mid¬ 
dleton so much as think of saying “bishop” to the man he had 
known so long. 

With a touch of harmless jocularity, Peter asked, “Which 
sermon have you for tomorrow, Bart?” 

And the bishop, not concealing his satisfaction at having an 
answer, said, “Peter, it may surprise you to know that I’ve ac¬ 
tually worked up a new one.” 

“Good for you,” said Peter, and meant it. “What’s the sub¬ 
ject?” 

The other told him, “Life’s Mysterious Withholdings;” and 
gave chapter and verse. 

Peter recognized the passage, more clearly than Bartelmy 
guessed. “Well, Bart,” he said, slowly and, as the bishop 
thought, a little sadly, “you’re the last man I should have 
thought brave enough to tackle a theme and a text like that. 
Have you enjoyed yourself as you worked it up?” 

Queerly enough, the bishop had, after a fashion; the histori¬ 
cal allusions seemed to him good. And he said, “Why, yes;” 
but the question sounded a little peculiar, and he asked Middle- 
ton what made him put it just that way. 

“I was thinking,” Peter answered, “that a sermon like that 
might be useful tomorrow to at least one man.” But when the 
bishop would have him explain, he changed the subject. He 
could do that. 

The customs of Baccalaureate Sunday are much the same in 


SHODDY 


319 


all Middle-West colleges; probably they are a trace less formal 
than in the older schools further east. The faculty in academic 
dress and the trustees, a few likewise arrayed, the rest some¬ 
what incongruous but less self-conscious in their business suits, 
sat in a half-circle back of the pulpit. The senior class, newly 
capped and gowned, faced the pulpit from the first rows of 
seats in the center of the great gymnasium. Around and above 
them, on the main floor and in the sweeping curves of the gal¬ 
lery, were twenty-five hundred people; students, townspeople, 
the families of the seniors and miscellaneous visitors. Nearly 
everybody present had some sort of personal relation to the 
college, and, in a way, to the preacher of the morning. All 
knew him, or knew about him;—a Calder man and a Kansas 
man who had come to be bishop. As he sat by the president 
•he constantly caught recognizing and friendly glances. 

Everything went as it usually does on such occasions. The 
service was expected to run over time, and nobody minded the 
long Scripture reading, or the long prayer of the venerable 
president of the Board of Trustees, or the long musical pro¬ 
gram. Most of all, the people were prepared to sit patiently 
through a long sermon. The sense of being a part of the spec¬ 
tacle would offset the restless weariness of an ordinary service 
thus prolonged. 

On Sunday night, after the whole miserable business was 
over, the bishop could not recall, as he tossed in his berth, the 
first trifle which that morning had frayed the edge of his usual 
composure. He had been just nervous enough at the start to 
feel as he always felt before a Calder audience, but that of it¬ 
self would not have shaken him. He well knew how to control 
such disquiet. 

Whatever it was, it had come early in his sermon. He had 
not finished reviewing the story of the Samaria siege—and with 
sorry pride he remembered afterward how it held the audience, 
as well by the gift he had cultivated of turning any story into 
a word picture as by its sheer emotional interest—when a 
tremor of indefinable distress touched him. It came just as he 
reached the prophet’s word which he had chosen as his text. 
It was akin to the distress he had sometimes known when in 
the midst of an address the swift suspicion had crossed his mind 
that he had used that theme before, and with the same audi¬ 
ence. That wasn’t it, this time. Yet it brought the same be- 


320 


SHODDY 


wildering sense of self-exposure; a feeling capable of doing 
sudden damage to the nerves. 

But this lasted only for an instant. Presently he was him¬ 
self again, dignified and yet not cold; one moment properly 
serious and the next genial and almost debonair, as those who 
enjoyed his public appearances liked him to be. 

After ten minutes or so he had occasion to repeat the text. 
And the quiver or tremor, or whatever it was, came again. So 
far, it is probable that no one had noticed anything wrong, ex¬ 
cept perhaps Peter Middleton. After it was all over, the 
bishop, remembering Peter’s cryptic remark of Saturday, real¬ 
ized that his old friend had known from the outset that he was 
taking some kind of risk. 

The recurrence of this unease put him off the track of his 
outline, and he discovered that he had omitted the next head 
of the sermon, as well as a rather striking illustration which 
he had worked up with some care. To gain time, once more he 
repeated the text. And again, as by some secret signal, the 
trembling and its nameless fear swept through him. 

By now he was thoroughly alarmed. Words rose haltingly 
to his lips. The mind-resting phrases which at other times he 
could have rounded out with slight effort into acceptably rhyth¬ 
mical platitudes, became a jumbled and clumsy incoherence. 
He felt himself on the verge of panic. He tried to steady his 
nerves, as well as to gain time, by the impressive reiteration of 
the text, only to increase his distraction as the strange unease 
recurred. 

What could he do? Though by this time the rest of his ser¬ 
mon was fogging into a hopeless mental blur, he dared not 
stop. He struggled for coherence, and even as he struggled a 
steadily-growing fear began to chill him through. “I’ll break 
down if I’m not careful. Whatever can it be? Am I ill?” 
But he knew it was no illness of the body which had suddenly 
come upon him. 

He began to be aware of other fears, crossing the path of the 
first. It seemed to him that here and there in the audience 
he could discern wondering and almost hostile glances. The 
gowned group around him stirred uneasily. The seniors put 
hands to mouths and whispered. A new and colder spasm of 
dread shook him. He felt himself facing a general and resent¬ 
ful disapproval. 


SHODDY 


321 


And then, as once again he repeated the text of his sermon, 
light came; a cruel, penetrating light. It thrust at him like a 
weapon in unseen hands. The words he had spoken, the proph¬ 
et’s words, seemed to burn white-hot before his eyes; “Thou 
shalt see it_but thou shalt not eat_I” 

On he stumbled, caring now only to find a stopping place. 
His sermon’s form was in irrecoverable wreck; out of it he 
could grasp no salvage at all, save, possibly, some fragments of 
the customary charge to the graduating class. 

In an agony of terror he paused, the stabbing inner light 
of the pitiless words every instant more searing and yet exqui¬ 
sitely torturing. He looked down, appealingly, on the young 
faces before him. If only he could see in them some trace of 
trust, some reassuring look of confidence. But no; there 
seemed neither grace nor understanding in them; and the great 
company all about was begininng to change into a many¬ 
voiced, menacing presence. He thought everybody knew what 
now he knew; everybody saw him for what he was. Was any¬ 
thing left, now, but to confess, and, if he could, escape? How 
could he escape from this horrible commingling of reality and 
nightmare? He had no power to separate fact from illusion. 

“Members of the graduating class,” he tried to say, “it 
is my pleasant duty—” and with a groan he saw again in the 
baleful inner light those stern words of Elisha’s striking straight 
at himself; 11 Thou shalt see it,” and in him now was left no 
remnant of pleasant words—“it is rather my solemn duty to 
warn you—” and a merciful darkness closed in around him. 

He swerved as from a physical blow, and turned blindly from 
the pulpit. All he could recollect, when he tried to think what 
had happened, was the beginning of his fall, with Peter Middle- 
ton catching and steadying him. Peter had quietly made his 
way to the platform from a side seat, as soon as he realized that 
the bishop was in some sort of distress; and had just time for 
a whispered word to the musical director before his strong arms 
went about the almost unconscious preacher and saved him 
from falling headlong. The organ sounded the opening meas¬ 
ures of an anthem, and the astonished but well-trained choir 
rose and struck into the selection appointed to follow the 
sermon. 

The bishop knew enough to be able to say, thickly, implor- 



322 SHODDY 

ingly, “Peter, old man, for God’s sake get me out of here; 
they’ll kill me!” 

Peter, with two or three others, half led, half carried him 
through a door at the side of the platform, away from that 
menacing crowd, which to the distraught bishop’s fancy was 
now seeking to tear him to pieces. Darkness came again, and 
when next he returned to consciousness he was in a bedroom of 
the president’s house. A doctor had come, and evidently had 
made some examination before the patient came to. 

“No,” he was saying to those in the room, “it is not apo¬ 
plexy, nor heart failure. He’s just fainted. Some sort of a 
sudden shock while he was preaching, I imagine, though I was 
in the congregation, and can’t for the life of me guess what it 
could have been. But I saw he was in trouble, just about the 
time Mr. Middleton did.” 

The bishop confirmed the doctor’s opiuion, by trying to get 
up. “Not yet, Bishop,” the other said, “you’re probably all 
right, but you’d better lie still a while.” 

“Why, there’s nothing the matter;” but the bishop’s voice 
belied his words. “I probably lost consciousness for a time; 
but people often do that when they’re speaking, don’t they, 
Doctor?” 

“People lose consciousness under all sorts of circumstances, 
if the conditions are there. You’ve been working pretty hard 
lately, haven’t you, Bishop?” 

“No more than usual,” Bishop Bonafede answered, “but I 
was somewhat below par this morning.” And he tried to smile, 
with poor success. 

The doctor sent everybody out of the room. “I want to 
stay a moment longer,” he said. 

“Now, Bishop,” he told his patient, “I don’t know what 
was wrong. But you were bothered, someway, from the very 
start. Did you get nervous and fussed because your memory 
went back on you, and you forgot?” 

“No, not that.” The bishop shivered a little. “It was the 
other way ’round; because I remembered. And it was top much 
for me. But it’s quite out of your line, and all you can do is 
to give me something that will settle my nerves for a few hours. 
Didn’t I hear you say that I was physically all right?” 

“Yes, and I think you are. But there’s something else 
wrong.” 


SHODDY 


323 


“There is, Doctor, and I wish I could talk it out with you. 
But I can’t; not now. Just let me get a couple of hours sleep, 
and I’ll be myself again.” 

To all appearances he was. By mid-afternoon he awoke, and 
told the president that he would not change his arrangements, 
which called for his leaving on the late evening train. The 
president protested, but Bishop Bonafede said, “Ask Dr. Mor¬ 
gan. He’ll tell you it’s perfectly safe.” He thought he could 
trust that doctor. 

The affair made a great sensation in the town, of course, 
though all possible pains were taken, when it was known that 
Bishop Bonafede had so quickly recovered, to minimize it. 
Various explanations were given. The official statement, hand¬ 
ed to the editor of the town paper, in his capacity of Associated 
Press correspondent, was that Bishop Bonafede, who for some 
time had been working beyond his strength, had been taken 
ill with one of those sudden but not serious derangements of 
stomach and nerves to which men who work under great strain 
are liable. 

But the bishop knew. When he awoke in the afternoon the 
thing had already become clear. The truth, which in his panic 
he had been on the point of blurting out, now separated itself 
from its distracting accompaniment of unrealities. He had been 
gripped by an illusion of persecution, perhaps, which had made 
each of his auditors seem a threatening foe. But back of the 
illusion there was a terrible truth. That day he had seen him¬ 
self twice; once as these people thought him when he faced 
them at the opening of his sermon, and once as they might 
have seen him in the light which had shown him to himself. 
The garment of pretense had given way. His effort to give the 
prophet’s warning a modern application had been all too suc¬ 
cessful. It had put such a strain on his own life’s fabric that 
the uncertain fibres had pulled apart; he had stood before 
God, and, as he felt, before the people whose needs he was set 
to supply, naked and afraid. 

The tragedy of Samaria had been re-enacted. Trusted by 
the college to declare to its children the hidden riches of Chris¬ 
tian living, he knew himself after all these years to be a pauper 
of the faith, a shepherd of souls who had yielded his own sou! 
to unclean beasts. 

He saw himself near kinsman to the Captain of the Bible 


SHODDY 


324 , 

story. Time, and little else, separated these two. One in their 
love for the outward show of things, one in their readiness to 
become almoners of a bounty they had lost the power to share. 
“How like we are,” thought Bartelmy Bonafede in his Pullman 
berth. “How like! But not all through. The captain died in 
the midst of plenty. The captain died.... died” And the 
train roared on through the night. 

IV 

For several years Peter had been in growing demand as a 
speaker, particularly since the Oxford Fellowship had begun to 
attract attention. His calls came from all parts of the Middle 
West. He learned his way from the station to the Methodist 
church or the principal hotel and back again, in a hundred 
towns within a night’s ride of Great Meadows. In the sum¬ 
mer, especially, he felt free to earn money for the Fellowship 
by this sort of work, hard though it was, and he gave two or 
three days a week to it. 

A postponed date took him out of town in the first week of 
Tech, and he was hurrying back on Friday for a meeting with 
his student cabinet. The train was late, and when he reached 
the Center the group was already assembled. One of the boys 
stood in the portal, ready for whatever small service he might 
render. 

“I’ll be there in a jiffy, Harry,” said Peter. “Is there any 
mail?” 

“A few fetters,” said Harry, “and a telegram,” picking them 
up from the hall table. 

To Peter, glancing the letters over, they seemed either unim¬ 
portant or from strangers. At any rate they could wait. He 
thrust them into the pocket of his overcoat, and opened the 
telegram. 

“Hello; it’s from Bishop Bonafede.” And he read, “Shall 
pass through Great Meadows late Sunday night, stopping be¬ 
tween trains. Must see you. Bart.” 

“Funny,” said Peter, half to himself. “What’s Bonafede 
doing here? He’s got an Eastern Conference beginning Wed¬ 
nesday, and I saw by the Advocate he was to be in Penn¬ 
sylvania last Tuesday. See, Harry, this wire is from Pitts¬ 
burgh. Well; I’ll be ready for him. The only train he can 


SHODDY 325 

come in on is the 10:40. I’ll be through for the day by that 
time.” 

He put the telegram in his pocket with the letters, and hur¬ 
ried into the room where his helpers waited. There was much 
to be done in this opening week, and he depended so largely 
on student assistance that he would not let anything interfere 
with that part of his Oxford Fellowship strategy. 

But Sunday saw the work of the Center almost up to mid¬ 
term exactingness; the town had filled up in the last few days, 
and every activity was organizing for the season. Peter’s morn¬ 
ing sermon, heard by as many people as could crowd into the 
assembly room, might have been a sort of religious matricula¬ 
tion address. His chief concern was that Methodist students 
coming to Tech should grasp, from the opening day, the values 
of the Oxford Fellowship, and he did not so much preach as 
seek to produce the first stirrings of a sense of belonging. 

In the evening he had arranged, as his custom was, a com¬ 
munion service, with a short sermon. He needed the sort of 
prepartion which solitude affords, and in the late afternoon he 
set out cross-country for a vigorous walk. Always he reveled 
in this combination of exercise and straight thinking, and, as 
today, sometimes he forgot how long a mile or two can be on 
the return half of the journey. When at last he turned in to 
the Center, somewhat warm and winded, the hour of evening 
worship was almost come. 

Harry Meredith, on hand as usual to be of use if needed, fol¬ 
lowed him into the study. Taking off his light overcoat, pre¬ 
paratory to a quick wash, Peter’s hand encountered a small 
sheaf of letters. 

“What’s this?” he said, surprised, as he pulled them out. 
“Oh, yes, I remember. I picked them up on Friday night, with 
Bishop Bonafede’s telegram. Hadn’t thought of them since. 
Say, Harry; look them over, won’t you, and open them, while 
I freshen up a little.” 

Harry picked them up, and slit the envelopes. “Most of 
this isn’t much, Mr. Middleton,” he said; “circulars and things. 
But here’s one that you ought to have. It’s marked at the top 
‘Important.’ ” 

“All right, Harry,” said Peter, his hands still in the wash¬ 
bowl; “read it, please; unless it’s from Rhoda.” 

“No; it’s not even signed, except with initials.” 


326 


SHODDY 


He began to read, without much interest; but his voice 
dropped as he came nearer to the tragic appeal of it. 

“Dear Mr. Middleton,” it began, “you would remember me, 
I guess, but there is no use to bother you that much. Ten years 
ago, when you were at College Park, I brought my girl up 
from home, and you married us in the parsonage. We’re still 
married; but I am in a whole lot of trouble. Just a few days 
ago I found out that my wife had gone wrong. She don’t know 
yet that I even suspect anything. The fellow has skipped. He 
was a crook, as well as rotten other ways, and he ain’t coming 
back. Well, Mr. Middleton, I got to have real help because 
this trouble has got me down, and somehow I thought of you. 
I ain’t had the nerve to come to you straight out and open; the 
thing has broken me up, sort of. I don’t know if you can 
help me, but if not, nobody can, and I’m through. We live in 
Edgerton, and so next Sunday night my wife and me will come 
to Great Meadows, and we aim to hear you preach. For God’s 
sake, Mr. Middleton, say something in your sermon that will 
tell me what to dol” 

“All the signature,” said Harry as he ended the reading, 
“is ‘D. S.’ ” 

Middleton, with amazed eyes, turned to the other, the towel 
still in his hands. 

“Harry, what in the world shall I do? That sounds like a 
real call for help. But it’s time for the service this minute, and 
I was going to preach on the rich young ruler, ‘The Call of 
Christ to Youth.’ Of course that’s impossible, now. I wonder 
whoever ‘D. S.’ can be.” 

They could hear the piano, though the voluntary had ended. 
The pianist was improvising until the preacher should appear 
through the door opening on the platform. 

With quick decisiveness Peter spoke again. “Harry, I don’t 
know yet what to do; but I shall. Just now you must help me. 
Go on in and start the service. You’ve done it before. Give 
out the hymn. Ask Brother Clement to offer the opening 
prayer; he’s always ready. Read the Scripture lesson and 
make the announcements. They’re on the pulpit. By the time 
you get to the second hymn I hope to be ready; but until then 
I’ll stay here and see if I can get something to say. Go on, 
now; you must stand by me tonight, old man. I’ll be out in 
time for the sermon, somehow.” 


SHODDY 


327 


In any other sort of emergency, Harry probably would have 
refused, flatly; but the letter had stirred him, too. Without a 
word he opened the door to the platform and stepped up to the 
pulpit. The hymn before the sermon was in its last stanza 
when Peter Middleton entered from the study and went to his 
place. Now he was turning the leaves of the pulpit Bible, and 
smoothing the pages when the book lay open at the chapter he 
sought. Below him stood the Table, covered with its fair linen 
cloth. 

He began to speak with a quiet intensity that barely hinted 
at the pent-up forces within: “My text tonight is found in 
Luke’s Gospel, eleventh chapter, ‘And f or give us our sins, for 
we also forgive every one that is indebted to us” 

The student congregation sensed something. The preacher’s 
deliberately level voice was not less suggestive than the won¬ 
derful old impossible words. None could have said that he 
heard anything new; the old strangeness of the sermon was 
that dozens of its hearers declared, afterward, “He was talking 
to me.” 

Then came the Supper; never had Peter been more sure of 
its answer to men’s deepest need. Brother Clement, a retired 
minister, and two other men in orders assisted. It was or¬ 
derly and utterly reverent, but no moment was lost. Group 
after group received the elements and retired. At the last, ten 
or eleven knelt at uneven intervals along the cushioned ledge 
before the chancel-rail. 

All the time Peter’s eye had been busy. Intently he had 
scanned each group as it came forward, looking for some sign; 
though what, he knew not. Only when this last group came was 
the sign given him; but he saw it instantly. A man and a 
woman were coming forward together, the woman evidently 
under the greater stress of feeling. In the man’s broad shoul¬ 
ders, in the vaguely familiar swing of his body as he moved 
down the aisle, in the shape of his bent head which shaded his 
face, Peter was sure he saw someone not wholly a stranger. 

A whispered hint to his helpers, and they stood back. He 
took the bread, and when he had come to the couple kneeling 
at the far end of the chancel-rail, he knew. It was the man he 
had thought. 

And quietly, as at Parkerville in the old days, he spoke, over 
the extended plate, “Steady, Doug; you’re on the right track. 


328 


SHODDY 


You got what I was driving at, didn’t you?” The man nodded. 

Again he came, bringing the wine. As he offered it he leaned 
over and whispered to the woman, “Shed for thee; it means 
Christ’s forgiveness, and you’ve got Doug’s, too.” 

And he turned himself back to the steps at the other end of 
the platform. 

He had not reached them when from the woman’s lips, wet 
with the wine of the sacrament, there burst a great sob of heart¬ 
broken contrition; as Peter looked back he saw the two still 
kneeling at the chancel-rail, but in each other’s arms. 

And at that moment from instrument and choir came 
the first strains of an ancient hymn of praise and penitence; 
“Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace, good will .... 
Thou that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy 
on usl” 

v 

All through the summer Peter’s thoughts had turned per¬ 
sistently to Bishop Bonafede. When his 9 ne-time friend had 
insisted on setting out alone, after his upset at the Calder com¬ 
mencement, it was with something of the old affection, in spite 
of what he knew and of more which he guessed, that Peter 
waved goodbye to him from the platform as the sleeper rolled 
out of the station. 

The Advocates told him that Bartelmy was busy here and 
there. Marcus, he knew, had taken Judith with him to Mex¬ 
ico, on a special assignment for his London paper, and Viola 
would be dividing her time between Atlantic City and a Michi¬ 
gan summer resort where there was enough Methodist atmos¬ 
phere to serve the needs of a bishop’s wife, but no social or 
religious responsibilities. And now the bishop was coming far 
out of his way to say something; Peter could not imagine what. 

There had been an unforgettable half hour in the study after 
the communion service. Peter intercepted Doug Swanley and 
his wife as they were trying to slip away from the service, and 
what was said and done, while these three, behind the study’s 
closed door, talked of Parkerville and one another and the for¬ 
giving grace of God, they never told. 

They came out as Peter was saying, “Isn’t it a piece of good 
luck that I have to meet the train you’ll take for Edgerton? 
I’ll call a cab, and see you off in style. And remember, you’ve 


SHODDY 


329 


promised to keep in touch with me. I’ll be up to see you, and 
you come here when you can. You’re close enough. It’s not 
fair that old friends should lose sight of one another as you 
and I have done, Doug.” 

“That’s so, Mr. Middleton,” said Doug. “You’ll not lose us 
again in a hurry.” 

The taxi came in answer to Peter’s telephoned order, and the 
three rode down to the station. “I’ve to meet Bishop Bona- 
fede on this train, so you’ll have to put yourselves on board 
without any help,” he said. And the goodbyes they exchanged 
as the train rolled in to the station would have done credit to 
the parting of lifelong friends. 

Peter hurried down the platform to the Pullmans, just in 
time to take the bishop’s bags from the porter. “We’ll check 
these,” he said, “and then off we go. I’ve a taxi waiting.” 

“Where can we go that will be quiet; with no interruptions?” 
the bishop asked. 

“At this time of night,” Peter answered, “the loneliest place 
in this town is the lounge at Leyton Center. There’s been 
something doing all day, but everybody has gone home by now. 
Tonight we could plot whatever you like and nobody would be 
the wiser.” He was trying to make talk, for he felt that some¬ 
thing was coming, and he did not want it to begin in a yellow 
cab. 

As they were entering the big front door, the bishop said, 
“Tell the taxi to come back in time for my train, won’t you, 
Peter? I’ve got less than an hour, and I need it all.” 

In a moment they were in the big lounge, hospitable and 
welcoming. Peter led the way to the couch in front of the 
empty fireplace, and the other settled himself among its cush¬ 
ions with a great sigh. 

He plunged in without preface. “There’s no need to beat 
about the bush,” he said. “Peter, I’ve got to talk to you, 
although I know it’s no use, and you’ll think less of me when 
I’m done than you do now, much as you may doubt that. The 
psychologists have some name or other for the thing that drives 
me to come to you, but I don’t know what it is. All I know is 
I’ve got it. You’re the only man I can turn to. You know a 
good deal of what I have to say, and some you have guessed. 
Anyway, I must talk it out. I can’t talk to Marcus. Tried it, 
just before he left on this last trip. Viola? No; you know 


330 


SHODDY 


she wouldn’t understand. The only man in the Board of 
Bishops I might go to would be Eberle; but this isn’t a thing 
to tell to another bishop. I’ve got to live with them, and 
they’ve got to live with me. I simply couldn’t stand it, that 
one of them knew all about me.” 

“But, Bart, why come to me? What can I do with whatever 
it is you want to say?” Peter was honestly puzzled. 

“Nothing. I’m not looking for anything to be done. All 
summer I have lived with this thing alone, but I can’t go 
another day without talking; and you are the only man who’ll 
let me say my say and understand the very heart of it, and let 
me go without preaching the obvious stuff that I know full as 
well as any preacher knows it. You’ll think I’m weak, and I 
am. No matter. I’ve got to feel that somebody knows all 
this; somebody I can trust with my very soul.” 

Peter looked at him and wondered. As they sat there, if he 
were to put his arm across the back of the couch it would rest 
on the bishop’s shoulders. He wanted to do it. They had not 
been in such physical nearness since the days when they had 
slept in the same bed in the old house on Paint Creek, and in 
the same room at Calder. What was it Bartelmy had to say? 
He had an inkling, and yet could hardly believe that the bishop 
would really let himself go. Certainly he was wholly unpre¬ 
pared for the cold frankness with which this man who had been 
his boyhood friend now bared the ugly truth. 

“Peter, you win. That’s what I’ve come to say. You’ve 
always won. I always tried to outdo you, from the time you 
took me into your father’s house. I never succeeded. Right at 
the start I showed you how to make a milking stool, and you 
bettered my workmanship. I set out to keep you and Effie 
Bailey apart, and maybe I should have done it but that I went 
after what I thought was bigger game. I tricked you out of 
first place in an oratorical contest, and you took it in the very 
way that spoiled my victory. It was through me you were 
moved from Parkerville, and you scored a bigger success at 
College Park. Because I thought you were in my way at 
Columbus Avenue, I put Bishop Randolph up to sending you 
to a forlorn hope here at Great Meadows; and you have made 
yourself a name in the whole church with your Oxford Fellow¬ 
ship.” 


SHODDY 


331 


“But that’s ridiculous, Bart. You make me out a pretty 
helpless sort of puppet. It isn’t very complimentary.” 

“You got Effie, when I wasn’t discerning enough to keep 
her,” Bart went on; unheeding. “You got my boy, when I 
was too busy with my ambitions to be his father. You are 
what you are; and I—well, I am a bishop in the Methodist 
Episcopal Church. But even what that might be is spoiled 
for me when I remember that you know how it happened, and 
you know what price I have paid and shall keep on paying for 
the power and the glory. 

“I’m talking to you now because I know that somehow you 
have never been fooled, and yet you have never tried to get 
even. You let Colonel Burlington have his way, and Bishop 
Randolph his, and me mine. I believe that you guessed, long 
ago, how it was all going to work out. And now you have your 
Fellowship, a thing that events will make more and more 
necessary to the church.” 

Peter tried to break in again, with poor success. “But you 
have something, too, Bart. You’ve gone far since those old 
days.” 

“What have I? Why, the right to go on being bishop—the 
only kind of bishop I know how to be. Peter, the man in the 
Bible story I tried to preach about on that Sunday at Calder 
had one big advantage over me; when he came to his great 
hour, the thing he hadn’t believed in killed him. He was 
through with it all. When I came to my great hour, the thing 
I didn’t believe in had already killed something in me, though 
not until that night at Calder did I know that it was dead. 
But, Peter, it didn’t kill all of me. Some of me is still here. 
And I can’t go back on what I am. There’s no way out. 
I’ve thought it through, and I know. Why? Why, because 
the church says there’s no way out.” 

“I should hate to believe that,” said Peter. “It’s dead against 
everything in the Gospel that our church preaches, about those 
who acknowledge their faults, and.... ” 

“Just the same, it’s true,” Bartelmy interrupted. “I know 
not only because I’ve thought it through, but because I’ve 
tried it.” 

“Tried what?” 

“Tried to tell others what I’m telling you. It was at Long 
Beach, two weeks after that horrible day at Calder. I was 


332 


SHODDY 


down there for a committee meeting, and one morning I 
dropped in to that ‘Sunshine Hour’ or whatever it is they have 
every day just before noon. On a sudden imjpulse I determined 
to get up and make a clean breast of it.” 

Peter looked and felt incredulous. 

“You needn’t stare, Peter. I did. There was an ‘altar call’ 
for those who wanted what the leader called ‘a closer walk with 
God’. After a minute or two I went up with the others, and 
the leader, as soon as he recognized me, greeted me as you 
would expect him to. Forty people were kneeling there, I sup¬ 
pose, and he asked me to say a few words to them. 

“I stood up and said I wasn’t the man they thought me to be. 
I told something of what I have said here tonight, though 
I couldn’t get my own consent to put it quite so badly. But I 
laid it on as thick as I dared, in a place like that. And all I 
got out of it was the leader’s sickeningly fulsom,e praise of my 
humility and self-forgetful devotion to a great task. He posi¬ 
tively fawned on me. If I had been St. Francis, or, better, 
Francis Asbury, he couldn’t have done a completer job.” 

“But surely you don’t think what happened at one place is 
any sign of how the church in general would look at a man who 
wanted to get such a thing said,” Peter protested. 

“Not altogether, Peter; but, after all, you know yourself 
that, as far as the church at large is concerned, I’m speaking 
the words of truth and soberness. The church knows how to 
offer Christ to youth, that has everything to give. It knows 
how to offer Christ to a broken-willed down-and-out, when he 
has nothing to lose. But, Peter, what can it do for a bankrupt 
bishop? There’s plenty in the Discipline that tells how to 
deal with a bishop who has broken the laws of the state, or 
maladministered the business of the church,—a wicked bishop; 
and how to dispose of a disabled bishop. But I don’t think the 
men who made the Discipline ever so much as thought of a 
penitent bishop. There can’t be such a man. He would be 
a flat denial of the system that made him. You and I have 
known many an unworthy candidate for the episcopacy; but 
what bishop of your acquaintance, after his election, was any¬ 
thing but faithful, well-meaning, impartial, and—more than all 
—away above reach of spiritual reproach? Search the Advocates 
as far back as you will; election to the episcopal office dooms a 
man who is not good to play a part. He must be what the 


SHODDY 


333 


church says he is. Ours is a proud church. We have almost 
lost the capacity—perhaps the need—for confession and peni¬ 
tence. That sort of thing appears here and there among our 
humbler people; but do you think the church would endure 
it to have a bishop who baldly confessed himself a sinner? 
Not a bit. It would insist to the world and to itself that ex¬ 
cessive devotion to the church’s interests had for the moment 
unhinged his mind. Rather than let him put himself in the 
pillory, it would unhesitatingly put him in the madhouse. Not 
for a minute could the church’s self-love permit him to confess 
to such sins as mine. I have too imich pride to let myself be 
counted mad, and the system has too much pride to let me be 
counted a sinner.” 

“But, Bart,” said Peter, “you talk as though this ‘system’ 
were all there is to the church. And it isn’t, by a long way.” 

“No; but the system, or the machine, or whatever name you 
like, has become so big that it is too strong to be resisted or 
turned aside from the direction in which it is moving. It gets 
men, when they give themselves to it. I am not saying that it 
gets every man. It hasn’t got you. And I’m not saying that 
it gets every man who reaches high place. But there is some¬ 
thing in most men that the system can fit to its purposes, alto¬ 
gether apart from any question of moral character; there was 
in me, and it’s there yet. Whatever else I’ve lost, I’ve got that 
sort of ability and adaptability.” 

Peter had been, at the beginning, incredulous. Then he had 
listened, despite a protesting inner sense of shame, which mo¬ 
mently lost itself in a growing pity for the man whom he had 
never quite ceased to love. 

“I know how to be a bishop,” the inexorable voice went on. 
“I can go through all the motions. I can deliver my usual 
speeches, and preach my usual sermons. As long as I have my 
health I can be a good enough bishop to get by. I can make 
appointments. I can meet committees. You will know, al¬ 
ways, of course, what sort of a bishop I am. And I think you 
may be sorry for me. That hurts, but I can’t help it. Viola 
never expected me to be anything else. If she knew what I 
am saying to you she would not understand, or care. Marcus 
doesn’t know. He only fears. If I could keep him from find¬ 
ing out, I would. When I first knew of Judith I feared for 
him. He is the son of shoddy, and by his marriage he has 


334 


SHODDY 


come back to the children of shoddy. He’s a Bonafede bound 
to a Jessop. Perhaps, by some trick of inheritance he will be 
an Oldroyd, and not a Bonafede at all, with more of my mother 
and her father in him than of my father and myself. It seems 
as if that might be so. I hope it is.” 

Peter’s whole soul was stirred. For twenty years he had 
been accustomed to confessions. He had sent sappy freshmen 
out of his study, after tales told with an excess of abject weep¬ 
ing, their heads up and their eyes shining with something like 
new purpose. He was still a-quiver from the poignant half- 
hour which Doug Swanley and his wife had just spent with 
him. 

But here was something new, and terrible beyond all these 
others. This was a man he knew better than he knew his own 
brothers; knew inside and out; a man he would still go far to 
help; and he couldn’t help him. 

For, after all, wasn’t Bartelmy right? He owed something 
to his church, at least enough to save it from the defamers. In 
these days of pitiless publicity for every erring cleric, not a 
front page in America but would welcome with its biggest head¬ 
lines such a story. How the scoffers would scoff, in their 
signed columns, in their personal magazines; how the baser re¬ 
ligionists of every creed and cult would jeer at the Methodists. 

The Board of Bishops would be humiliated to the dust. 
These good men had been unhappy about other affairs in their 
time, but never such a shame as this, touching one of their own 
number, had been blazoned to the world. And the farthest 
country church on the smallest district of the remotest con¬ 
ference would feel the disgrace of it all. No; the church could 
not endure it. Bartelmy was so far right. 

And yet Peter could scarcely claim much ingenuity for the 
only suggestion which offered. 

“I see, or I think I do, Bart, what you are facing,” he said, 
his voice under poor control. “It would be useless to say I 
don’t, or to minimize the things you have said. You believe the 
price of telling to the church and, necessarily, to the world, 
what you have told me, is too heavy for you—and the church 
—to pay. It may be. That’s a question I never faced before; 
an awful question. Have you thought of retiring?” 

“A thousand times; and as often given it up. What sort of 
a way out would that be? Retired, I’d still be Bishop Bona- 


SHODDY 


335 


fede. To go into complete seclusion isn’t possible. I’ve my 
wife to think of; and Marcus and his wife, as well as the 
church. And, short of disappearing, I’d be up against all sorts 
of impossible situations, all the time. Think a bit; and you 
can see what I mean; a bishop midway of his fifties, physi¬ 
cally fit, mentally as good as ever,—and retired! No, Peter; 
there’s nothing in that.” 

“But what will you do, then?” 

“In heaven’s name what can I do? Like the man in the 
parable, I cannot dig, and to beg I am ashamed. I must do 
what he did; be practical.” 

“But, Bart, it’s a very hell of a life you’re proposing for 
yourself.” 

“Don’t you suppose I know that as well as you do, Peter? 
I’ve always been the more orthodox of us two, and if I no longer 
believe in the old hell, it’s likely I believe in a worse one than 
you can. The old hell? Why, that wouldn’t be so bad.” 

Peter cringed. “Bart, you mustn’t. I can’t let you talk like 
that. There must be some way out. You’ve got to save your 
soul—yourself, at any cost. Nothing is as important as that, 
not even the church.” 

“Oh, yes it is, old man; always has been. Don’t you re¬ 
member that once a great churchman said that it was expedient 
that one man should die for the people? He meant expedient 
for the church. He was willing to let an innocent man die, 
rather than compromise the church. But when the man’s guilty, 
what could the church do, even if it knew? Nothing but let 
him die on his feet, without being found out! 

“That’s the solution, without telling anybody. Just for me 
to go ahead with the distribution of the bread of life. You 
know, none better, how hungry people are; and you’ve no¬ 
ticed, as I have, that people can be fed even under the preach¬ 
ing of a scoundrel. And, Peter, I’m not really a scoundrel, as 
men figure such things. I’ve only made the cheapest use of 
my opportunities. I do believe there are people in the church 
who wouldn’t be so very hard on me, even if they knew all that 
you know. Not many, but some; and some who have been 
trusted almost as greatly as I have been.” 

Peter sat with his head in his hands. A great surge of sor¬ 
row swept over him. Scarce an hour ago he had dealt with a 
penitent woman and a forgiving man. Could it be possible 


336 


SHODDY 


that the friend of his youth, driven by forces beyond any con¬ 
trol, was inexorably shut out from either penitence or pardon? 

Bartelmy stood up. The sight of Peter’s emotion almost 
shook his hard composure, but he would not yield. 

“Don’t take it to heart so, Peter,” he said. “I’m not worth 
it, though I wish I could tell you what your interest means to 
me. I must go. My train is due in fifteen minutes. You’ve 
been good to listen. You’ve always been better to me than 
anybody else; and—” for an instant his voice shook the merest 
trifle—“if you’ll let me say it, I’ve loved you as Jonathan loved 
David, ever since you took me out of the snow into your 
mother’s room. I loved you when I was using you for my own 
advantage; there was envy in it, and ambition; but now that 
all such things are gone, the other is more alive than ever. If 
I dared to pray in your presence I’d say just one prayer; ‘God 
bless Peter Middleton, my friend’.” 

They went out, somehow, to the taxi, and Bartelmy got in, 
not unsteadily. As it drove away, you would have said, if you 
had seen these men, that of the two the man who stood in the 
portal of Leyton Center, watching the cab until it turned a 
corner, was bearing the heavier burden,—a load of unutterable 
grief. 


VI 

The communion service at the opening of the Annual Con¬ 
ference was ending. Bishop Bonafede had supervised its ad¬ 
ministration, assisted by the district superintendents. Preach¬ 
ers and visitors had come in successive companies to kneel at 
the chancel-rail. Everything had been done decently and in 
order. 

As he lowered his outstretched arms at the close of the rit¬ 
ual benediction, the bishop picked up a Hymnal. 

“While the tables are being brought for the secretaries,” he 
said, “let us sing hymn number 560, ‘And Are We Yet Alive?’ ” 

The conference joined, as conferences innumerable have 
joined, and will join through years to come, in Charles Wes¬ 
ley’s hymn of reunion, without which a Methodist conference 
can scarcely be considered open. 


SHODDY 


337 


“What troubles have we seen, 

What conflicts have we passed, 

Fightings without, and fears within, 

Since we assembled last!” 

Then Bishop Bonafede, standing by the episcopal chair, an¬ 
nounced, “The Secretary of the last session will call the roll.” 
Ten minutes later, the roll of the living having been com¬ 
pleted,—“Let us rise and stand in silent tribute while the Sec¬ 
retary calls the name of those honored dead who since the last 
session have answered to the roll call in the better land.” 

After the moment of reverent standing the preachers took 
their seats, the district superintendents at their little tables 
in the chancel opened their brief cases and prepared for action, 
.and the bishop turned the leaves of his morocco-bound copy of 
the General Minutes to the proper page. 

In the steady, clear voice which was not the least of his 
episcopal assets, Bishop Bartelmy Bonafede arose and made 
the little speech which he knew by heart. 

“Before our business begins,” he said, “let me announce that 
I am ready to confer with any preacher or any committee about 
the appointments. Though I must take responsibility for final 
decisions, our Methodism, in form an autocracy, is in spirit 
wholly democratic. And so I shall be in my room from two 
to three this afternoon and tomorrow, and shall be glad to see 
anybody who cares to come. Naturally, with almost three 
hundred preachers to appoint, interviews must needs be brief. 
But all who come will be heard sympathetically and atten¬ 
tively.” 

Then picking up his Minutes he set the conference machine 
in motion: “We will take up the fifteenth question, ‘Was the 
character of each preacher examined?’ Frederick Storming- 
ton, of the Eastern District. Is there anything against him?” 

“Nothing against him,” said the preachers of the Eastern 
District, in the time-honored phrase. Brother Stormington 
arose and began to read his annual report; and once more a 
Methodist conference was moving to the rhythm of a routine 
which even war itself, not so long ago, proved powerless to 
interrupt. 

























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